<p>This article investigates the problem of robust and synchronized blade control for distributed electric propulsion in cycloidal rotor systems, a technology with substantial potential for sustainable maritime and aerial propulsion. Existing controllers provide limited effectiveness in handling decoupled blade synchronization, in capturing the complex coupled dynamics of the rotor-blade-actuator system, and in maintaining robustness against disturbances and parametric uncertainties. To overcome these limitations, a command-filtered adaptive backstepping controller is developed together with an event-triggered switching mechanism that enables a synchronous control mode when blade synchronization is required. The cycloidal rotor is modelled as a multi-input multi-output uncertain strict-feedback nonlinear system, and a novel filtering-error dynamics formulation is introduced to reduce command-filtering errors and improve smoothness of the control response. The proposed torque control laws for the rotor and blade actuators closely reproduce experimental observations of power loading, aerodynamic characteristics, and phase-angle kinematics. The benefit of employing distributed electric propulsion in the cycloidal rotor is further demonstrated by its ability to maintain a consistent thrust coefficient even when the number of active blades changes. Additionally, the effectiveness of the proposed controller is demonstrated through a finite-time stability analysis of the closed-loop system. The tracking errors are shown to converge to an arbitrarily small neighbourhood of the origin, and the control inputs remain smooth while ensuring accurate blade synchronization.</p>