Retrofit fault‐tolerant tracking control design of an unmanned quadrotor helicopter considering actuator dynamics

This paper presents a retrofit fault‐tolerant tracking control (FTTC) design method with application to an unmanned quadrotor helicopter (UQH). The proposed retrofit fault‐tolerant tracking controller is developed to accommodate loss‐of‐effectiveness faults in the actuators of UQH. First, a state feedback tracking controller acting as the normal controller is designed to guarantee the stability and satisfactory performance of UQH in the absence of actuator faults, while actuator dynamics of UQH are also considered in the controller design. Then, a retrofit control mechanism with integration of an adaptive fault estimator and an adaptive fault compensator is devised against the adverse effects of actuator faults. Next, the proposed retrofit FTTC strategy, which is synthesized by the normal controller and an additional reconfigurable fault compensating mechanism, takes over the control of the faulty UQH to asymptotically stabilize the closed‐loop system with an acceptable performance degradation in the presence of actuator faults. Finally, both numerical simulations and practical experiments are conducted in order to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed FTTC methodology on the asymptotic convergence of tracking error for several combinations of loss‐of‐effectiveness faults in actuators.     

Adaptive disturbance observer‐based finite‐time continuous fault‐tolerant control for reentry RLV

The control effectors of reusable launch vehicle (RLV) can produce significant perturbations and faults in reentry phase. Such a challenge imposes tight requirements to enhance the robustness of vehicle autopilot. Focusing on this problem, a novel finite‐time fault‐tolerant control strategy is proposed for reentry RLV in this paper. The key of this strategy is to design an adaptive‐gain multivariable finite‐time disturbance observer (FDO) to estimate the synthetical perturbation with unknown bounds, which is composed of model uncertainty, external disturbance, and actuator fault considered as the partial loss of actuator effectiveness in this work. Then, combined with the finite‐time high‐order observer and differentiator, a continuous homogeneous second‐order sliding mode controller based on the terminal sliding mode and super‐twisting algorithm is designed to achieve a fast and accurate RLV attitude tracking with chattering attenuation. The main features of the integrated control strategy are that the adaptation algorithm of FDO can achieve non‐overestimating values of the observer gains and the second‐order super‐twisting sliding mode approach can obtain a more elegant solution in finite time. Finally, simulation results of classical RLV (X‐33) are provided to verify the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed fault‐tolerant controller in tracking the guidance commands. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Sliding mode fault‐tolerant control of uncertain system: A delta operator approach

This paper is concerned with the sliding mode control of uncertain nonlinear systems against actuator faults and external disturbances based on delta operator approach. The nonlinearity, actuator fault, and external disturbance are considered in this study, and the bounds of Euclidean norms of the nonlinearity and the specific lower and upper bounds of the actuator faults and the disturbances are unknown knowledge. Our attention is mainly focused on designing a sliding mode fault‐tolerant controller to compensate the effects from the nonlinearity, unknown actuator fault, and external disturbance. Based on Lyapunov stability theory, a novel‐adaptive fault‐tolerant sliding mode control law is deigned such that the resulting closed loop delta operator system is finite‐time convergence and the actuator faults can be tolerated, simultaneously. Finally, simulation results are provided to verify the effectiveness of the proposed control design scheme. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Simultaneous Actuator and Sensor Faults Reconstruction Based on Robust Sliding Mode Observer for a Class of Nonlinear Systems

This paper proposes a new robust fault reconstruction and estimation design for a class of nonlinear system described by the Takagi‐Sugeno model with unmeasurable premise variables subject to faults affecting actuators, sensor faults, and unknown disturbances. The augmented Takagi‐Sugeno system is introduced with a new fault vector which has two origins: the first one represents actuator faults, the second one denotes faults affecting sensors. The main contribution is focused primarily to conceive a sliding mode observer with two discontinuous terms designed to compensate for fault behavior and disturbance variation from the system states estimation. In the formalism of linear matrix inequalities, we derive sufficient conditions to guarantee the state estimation error stability and to obtain the observer gains. Meanwhile, additional effort is made to achieve simultaneous faults and disturbance reconstruction. Simulation results are given to illustrate the proposed approach performances.     

Actuator fault detection and isolation: An optimised parity space approach

The use of an optimised parity space approach for actuator fault detection and isolation (FDI) is explored. The parity space spans all the parity relations that quantify the analytical redundancies available between the sensor outputs and the actuator inputs of a system. A transformation matrix is then optimised to transform these parity relations into residuals that are especially sensitive to specific actuator faults. Actuator faults cause the variance of parity space residuals to increase. A cumulative summation procedure is used to determine when residual variance has changed sufficiently to indicate a locked-in-place actuator fault. A pseudoinverse actuator estimation scheme is used to extract the actuator deflections from the parity relations. It is found that the optimisation of the parity space approach introduces the advantage of added design freedom to the fault detection algorithm. The approach is applied to the identification of faulty aircraft control surface actuators that remain locked-in-place during flight and is successfully tested both in simulation and practical flight.     

Robust fault-tolerant controller design for linear time-invariant systems with actuator failures: an indirect adaptive method

In this paper, indirect adaptive state feedback control schemes are developed to solve the robust faulttolerant control (FTC) design problem of actuator fault and perturbation compensations for linear time-invariant systems. A more general and practical model of actuator faults is presented. While both eventual faults on actuators and perturbations are unknown, the adaptive schemes are addressed to estimate the lower and upper bounds of actuator-stuck faults and perturbations online, as well as to estimate control effectiveness on actuators. Thus, on the basis of the information from adaptive schemes, an adaptive robust state feed-back controller is designed to compensate the effects of faults and perturbations automatically. According to Lyapunov stability theory, it is shown that the robust adaptive closed-loop systems can be ensured to be asymptotically stable under the influence of actuator faults and bounded perturbations. An example is provided to further illustrate the fault compensation effectiveness.     

Adaptive robust actuator fault compensation for linear systems using a novel fault estimation mechanism

This paper investigates the problem of adaptive fault‐tolerant control for a class of linear systems with time‐varying actuator faults. The outage and loss‐of‐effectiveness fault cases are covered. An active fault compensation control law was designed in two steps. Firstly, the time‐varying fault parameters were estimated based on a novel adaptive observer. Compared with the traditional adaptive observer, the actuator fault estimations are faster and the high‐frequency oscillations can be attenuated effectively. Such oscillations are usually caused by increasing the gains of adaptive laws to deal with abrupt changes in system dynamics. Then, based on online estimations of the fault parameters, an adaptive fault‐tolerant controller was constructed to compensate for the loss of actuator effectiveness and to eliminate the effect of fault estimation error. The asymptotic stability and an adaptive performance of a closed‐loop system can be guaranteed, even in the case of actuator faults and disturbances. Simulation results are given to verify the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed method. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Robust fault-tolerant controller design for linear time-invariant systems with actuator failures: an indirect adaptive method

In this paper, indirect adaptive state feedback control schemes are developed to solve the robust faulttolerant control (FTC) design problem of actuator fault and perturbation compensations for linear time-invariant systems. A more general and practical model of actuator faults is presented. While both eventual faults on actuators and perturbations are unknown, the adaptive schemes are addressed to estimate the lower and upper bounds of actuator-stuck faults and perturbations online, as well as to estimate control effectiveness on actuators. Thus, on the basis of the information from adaptive schemes, an adaptive robust state feed-back controller is designed to compensate the effects of faults and perturbations automatically. According to Lyapunov stability theory, it is shown that the robust adaptive closed-loop systems can be ensured to be asymptotically stable under the influence of actuator faults and bounded perturbations. An example is provided to further illustrate the fault compensation effectiveness.     

Robust fault and icing diagnosis in unmanned aerial vehicles using LPV interval observers

This paper proposes a linear parameter varying (LPV) interval unknown input observer for the robust fault diagnosis of actuator faults and ice accretion in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) described by an uncertain model. The proposed interval observer evaluates the set of values for the state, which are compatible with the nominal fault‐free and icing‐free operation and can be designed in such a way that some information about the nature of the unknown inputs affecting the system can be obtained, thus allowing the diagnosis to be performed. The proposed strategy has several advantages. First, the LPV paradigm allows taking into account operating point variations. Second, the noise rejection properties are enhanced by the presence of the integral term. Third, the interval estimation property guarantees the absence of false alarms. Linear matrix inequality–based conditions for the analysis/design of these observers are provided in order to guarantee the interval estimation of the state and the boundedness of the estimation. The developed theory is supported by simulation results, obtained with the uncertain model of a Zagi Flying Wing UAV, which illustrate the strong appeal of the methodology for identifying correctly unexpected changes in the system dynamics due to actuator faults or icing.     

Fault Detection and Isolation Method Based on H−/H∞ Unknown Input Observer Design in Finite Frequency Domain

This paper proposes an actuator fault detection and isolation strategy based on a bank of unknown input observers with finite frequency specifications. In order to deal with actuator fault diagnosis problem, a bank of H _?/H _∞ unknown input observers are designed to generate residuals, which are insensitive to the corresponding faults but sensitive to the other actuators faults, and meanwhile robust against the unknown disturbances. In this paper, the actuator faults and unknown disturbances are considered to belong to finite frequency domains, and two finite frequency performance indices are used to measure the fault sensitivity and the disturbance robustness of the residuals. Furthermore, some parameters for extra design of freedom are introduced in the H _?/H _∞ unknown input observers design. Based on the generalised Kalman‐Yakubovich‐Popov (GKYP) lemma, the design conditions of the H _?/H _∞ unknown input observer are derived and formulated as linear matrix inequalities (LMIs). Finally, a VTOL aircraft model is used to demonstrate the performance of the proposed fault diagnosis scheme.     

四旋翼无人机不匹配扰动抗干扰控制

针对四旋翼无人机存在的不匹配干扰和执行器故障等现象,提出了一种基于有限时间观测器的飞行控制方案。从无人机的运动学模型出发,构建了受执行器故障和不匹配干扰影响的控制模型。将干扰观测器与非奇异终端滑模控制 (NTSMC) 方法相结合,以实现复合抗干扰和容错控制器设计。首先,设计了两个非线性有限时间扰动观测器来估计不匹配扰动和执行器故障,有限时间观测器使得估计误差在有限时间内收敛到零。其次,将观测器与NTSMC控制方法结合,以在有限的时间内实现跟踪,并有效地减少抖振。最后,从理论和仿真验证了控制方法的有效性和所期望的控制性能。     

Robust adaptive fault‐tolerant tracking control for a class of high‐order nonlinear system with finite‐time prescribed performance

In this article, an improved prescribed performance adaptive control strategy is developed to handle the output tracking control problem for a class of nonlinear high‐order systems with actuator faults. The actuator faults considered include the bias fault and gain fault models. A technique of adding a power integrator is utilized to deal with the controller design problem of high‐order system. With the help of backstepping technology and the classic adaptive control, an output tracking control scheme is proposed, which can guarantee that all signals of the closed‐loop system are bounded and the tracking error converges to a finite‐time predetermined region. Finally, the feasibility of the presented control method is tested through the simulation results.     

Intelligent trajectory tracking of an aircraft in the presence of internal and external disturbances

This research deals with developing an intelligent trajectory tracking control approach for an aircraft in the presence of internal and external disturbances. Internal disturbances including actuators faults, unmodeled dynamics, and model uncertainties as well as the external disturbances such as wind turbulence significantly affect the performance of the common trajectory tracking control approaches. There are several fault‐tolerant control approaches in the literature to overcome the effects of specific actuator or sensor faults during the flight. However, trajectory tracking control of an air vehicle in the presence of unexpected faults and simultaneous presence of wind turbulence is still a challenging problem. In this paper, an intelligent neural network‐based model predictive control structure is proposed, where the prediction model is updated in each iteration based on a novel proposed online sequential multimodel structure. A hybrid offline‐online learning algorithm is adopted in the introduced online sequential multimodel structure to identify the time‐varying dynamics of the system. The proposed control structure can satisfactorily deal with unexpected actuator faults and structural damages as well as unmodeled dynamics and wind turbulence. The stability of the closed‐loop system is proved under some realistic assumptions. The simulation results demonstrate the high capability of the proposed approach for trajectory tracking control of a conventional aircraft in the simultaneous presence of system faults and external disturbances.     

Adaptive fault‐tolerant time‐varying formation tracking for multiagent systems with multiple leaders

In this paper, an adaptive fault‐tolerant time‐varying formation control problem for nonlinear multiagent systems with multiple leaders is studied against actuator faults and state‐dependent uncertainties. Simultaneously, the followers form a predefined formation while tracking reference signal determined by the convex combination of the multiple leaders. Based on the neighboring relative information, an adaptive fault‐tolerant formation time‐varying control protocol is constructed to compensate for the influences of actuator faults and model uncertainties. In addition, the updating laws can be adjusted online through the adaptive mechanism, and the proposed control protocol can guarantee that all the signals in the closed‐loop systems are bounded. Lyapunov‐like functions are addressed to prove the stability of multiagent systems. Finally, two examples are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the theoretical results.     

Robust adaptive tracking control of distributed delay systems with actuator and communication failures

This paper is concerned with the robust adaptive fault‐tolerant tracking control problem for a class of distributed delay systems against faulted and perturbed actuators and communications. As all the faults on actuators and communications, network delays in control and communication channels, and perturbations in communications and exogenous disturbances are unknown, some adaptation schemes are developed to adjust controller parameters in real‐time for constructing a class of distributed compensation controllers based on the delayed signals. Then, according to the information from the adaptive mechanism, the effect of each actuator and communication fault, network delay, channel perturbation and exogenous disturbance can be eliminated completely by using the proposed distributed adaptive‐state feedback controllers. Furthermore, asymptotic tracking results of the distributed closed‐loop systems can be achieved based on Lyapunov stability theory. An example is provided to further illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed direct adaptive design technique. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley and Sons Asia Pte Ltd and Chinese Automatic Control Society     

Nonlinear Actuator Fault Detection for Small-Scale UASs

This paper presents a recursive strategy for online detection of actuator faults on a unmanned aerial system (UAS) subjected to accidental actuator faults. The proposed detection algorithm aims to provide a UAS with the capability of identifying and determining characteristics of actuator faults, offering necessary flight information for the design of fault-tolerant mechanism to compensate for the resultant side-effect when faults occur. The proposed fault detection strategy consists of a bank of unscented Kalman filters (UKFs) with each one detecting a specific type of actuator faults and estimating corresponding velocity and attitude information. Performance of the proposed method is evaluated using a typical nonlinear UAS model and it is demonstrated in simulations that our method is able to detect representative faults with a sufficient accuracy and acceptable time delay, and can be applied to the design of fault-tolerant flight control systems of UASs.     

Fault tolerant control using virtual actuator for continuous‐time Lipschitz nonlinear systems

In this brief, we extend the existing results on fault tolerant control via virtual actuator approach to a class of systems with Lipschitz nonlinearities to maintain the closed‐loop stability after actuator faults. This generalization is established by relying on the input‐to‐state stability properties of cascaded systems. The virtual actuator block, placed between faulty plant and nominal controller, generates useful input signals for faulty plant by using output signals of the nominal controller to guarantee the closed‐loop stability in the presence of actuator faults. This design problem is reduced to a matrix inequality that can be turned to an LMI by fixing a variable to a constant value and solving the resulting LMI feasibility problem. The proposed fault tolerant control method is successfully evaluated using a nonlinear system. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

不确定飞行控制系统中断故障检测与分离

研究不确定飞行控制系统执行器中断故障检测与分离问题,同时设计了状态反馈控制器和检测器,在保证闭环控制系统稳定的前提下,通过设计的检测器对系统状态进行重组以产生残差进而检测执行器的中断故障。此外,通过设计一组分离器,可以确定出执行器发生故障的位置。最后,通过研究一个飞行控制系统模型验证了所提出方法的有效性。     

Robust adaptive fault‐tolerant control of uncertain linear systems via sliding‐mode output feedback

This paper is concerned with the robust adaptive fault‐tolerant compensation control problem via sliding‐mode output feedback for uncertain linear systems with actuator faults and exogenous disturbances. Mismatched disturbance attenuation is performed via H_∞ norm minimization. By incorporating the matrix full‐rank factorization technique with sliding surface design successfully, the total failure of certain actuators can be coped with, under the assumption that redundancy is available in the system. Without the need for a fault detection and isolation mechanism, an adaptive sliding mode controller, where the gain of the nonlinear unit vector term is updated automatically to compensate the effects of actuator faults, is designed to guarantee the asymptotic stability and adaptive H_∞ performance of closed‐loop systems. The effectiveness of the proposed design method is illustrated via a B747‐100/200 aircraft model. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.