Active Fault-Tolerant Control of Quadrotor UAVs Based on Passive Controller Bank

In this paper, an Active Fault Tolerant Control (AFTC) scheme for quadrotor UAVs suffering from actuator loss of effectiveness fault is presented. The AFTC is based on Passive Fault Tolerant Controller (PFTC) bank that contains a group of Sliding Mode Controllers, each one tuned to give the best performance for a specific fault. Whenever a fault is detected and identified, the relevant PFTC is activated resulting in the fault effect kept minimum. State estimation is ensured using an Extended Kalman Filter, and fault detection and estimation process is realized using a Fault Detection and Identification (FDI) unit that examine the changes in the control signals. Simulation results using an Astec Pelican quadrotor model emphasize the effectiveness of the proposed controller in the presence of multiple actuator faults.