Nonsingular Practical Fixed-Time Consensus Tracking for Multimotor System With Input Saturation

This article studies a novel fixed-time consensus tracking strategy for a multimotor system (MMS) with input saturation, suitable for most practical applications requiring stringent convergence time but with limited control input capability. First, a modified practical fixed-time stable theorem is proposed to guarantee that the actual system can reach a certain control precision in a fixed time, regardless of the initial states of the system. Then, an input saturation compensation system is also constructed to compensate for the input saturation to ensure fast convergence of the controller. Next, we propose a new distributed fixed-time consensus control algorithm for the MMS, which can render the time costs in both the reaching and sliding phases fixed. Inspired by the L'Hopital's rule, a hyperbolic tangent function is used to avoid the singularity of the controller. Besides, an experimental platform for verifying the algorithm is established. Finally, both simulation and experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed strategy.