Prescribed-Time Formation Control for Heterogeneous Nonlinear Multiagent Systems Under Time Delays and Actuator Faults

In this article, the prescribed-time formation is investigated for heterogeneous nonlinear multiagent systems affected by time delays and time-varying actuator faults, for which a novel hierarchical control protocol is proposed. Direct dependence on distributed error information is avoided, and the resulting control architecture consists of an auxiliary system consensus layer and a tracking control layer. Specifically, each agent is supplied with real-time reference signals via the constructed auxiliary system. Within the tracking layer, composite time-varying actuator faults are addressed by incorporating a Nussbaum-type gain protocol, through which effective fault compensation is enabled without requiring accurate prior information on fault size or actuation direction. Moreover, a new adaptive law is developed such that unknown fuzzy approximation errors and delay-related uncertainties can be estimated and compensated online. An appropriate Lyapunov–Krasovskii functional is constructed, and it is subsequently demonstrated that the closed-loop system can achieve the prescribed-time formation objective. Finally, formation-control simulations involving multiple uncrewed surface vehicles are carried out, through which the effectiveness of the proposed protocol is validated.