Robust fault tolerant tracking control with application to hybrid nonlinear systems

A class of nonlinear systems with faults, parametric uncertainties and without full state measurements are considered. A novel observer is designed whose estimation error is not affected by faults, and an observer-based fault tolerant tracking controller is proposed to make the outputs asymptotically track the reference signals while the states are bounded. The proposed fault tolerant control method can help to provide a switching detection scheme and a family of Lyapunov functions for a class of hybrid nonlinear systems with uncontrollable switchings, and to guarantee the global tracking performance. A three-tank system is taken as an example to show the efficiency of the proposed method.