A Review on Fault-Tolerant Control for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs)

The growing number of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) is considerable in the last decades. Many flight test scenarios, including single and multi-vehicle formation flights, are demonstrated using different control algorithms with different test platforms. In this paper, we present a brief literature review on the development and key issues of current researches in the field of Fault-Tolerant Control (FTC) applied to UAVs. It consists of various intelligent or hierarchical control architectures for a single vehicle or a group of UAVs in order to provide potential solutions for tolerance to the faults, failures or damages in relevant to UAV components during flight. Among various UAV test-bed structures, a sample of every class of UAVs, including single-rotor, quadrotor, and fixed-wing types, are selected and briefly illustrated. Also, a short description of terms, definitions, and classifications of fault-tolerant control systems (FTCS) is presented before the main contents of review.