Practical actuator fault detection, identification, and accommodation for a quadrotor with arbitrary faults through direct computation of thrusts

In this paper an actuator fault detection, identification, and accommodation for a quadrotor with multi- and arbitrary rotor faults is considered. In order to detect and identify the rotor faults the thrust experienced by each rotor is computed with Inertial Measurement Unit senor data and compared to the commanded thrust, thereby obtaining the fault severity of each rotor. An accommodation control backed by the identified faults is also considered to sustain the quadrotor. A sinusoidal disturbance in total thrust and some abrupt bias torque disturbances are also shown to be compensated. Simulation results for rotor faults with realistic sensor data show the applicability to the real quadrotor.