Fault Separation Based on An Excitation Operator with Application to a Quadrotor UAV

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel fault separation method for quadrotor UAVs using an excitation operator, effectively distinguishing actuator faults, load uncertainties, and system states to enhance safety and performance.

Contribution

It develops an excitation operator-based architecture that explicitly models actuator fault dynamics and integrates state estimation with fault separation for UAVs.

Findings

Effective fault separation demonstrated in simulations

Successful flight experiments validate the approach

Maintains high tracking performance under faults

Abstract

This paper presents an excitation operator based fault separation architecture for a quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) subject to loss of effectiveness (LoE) faults, actuator aging, and load uncertainty. The actuator fault dynamics is deeply excavated, containing the deep coupling information among the actuator faults, the system states, and control inputs. By explicitly considering the physical constraints and tracking performance, an excitation operator and corresponding integrated state observer are designed to estimate separately actuator fault and load uncertainty. Moreover, a fault separation maneuver and a safety controller are proposed to ensure the tracking performance when the excitation operator is injected. Both comparative simulation and flight experiments have demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed scheme while maintaining high levels of tracking performance.