Switched fault tolerant control for a quadrotor UAV

This paper addresses the problem of loss of motor effectiveness for a quadrotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). In this paper, faults consist of time-varying actuator gain reductions. In the case of a fault affecting one actuator only, we show that the stability and the performance of the controlled system is maintained despite the fact that there is no fault detection mechanism involved in the design. The fault tolerant controller comprises of state feedback gains and a min-switch strategy which are jointly designed. Simulation results show that the switched fault tolerant control enables the quadrotor to track well the desired velocity commands in the presence of a time-varying fault. The responses are also compared to those produced with a robust H 2 state-feedback gain.