Sensor fault detection and isolation for mobile robots in a multi-robot team

This paper presents fault detection and isolation (FDI) of dead reckoning and an external sensor (laser range sensor, LRS) on mobile robots in a multi-robot team. Each robot in the team monitors states (fault or fault-free) of the in-vehicle sensors by comparing velocity estimates obtained using its own two velocity providers: dead reckoning and laser-based scan matching. When the robot detects a fault, it compares two position estimates and identifies the faulty component (dead reckoning or LRS). The position estimates by each robot are obtained based on laser scan images captured by its own LRS and a leader robot's LRS. Each robot in a multi-robot team is equipped with a small number of sensors; however, there exist a large number of sensors in the entire team. Our FDI is thus designed based on hardware redundancy approach. It requires neither fault models nor dynamic models. Experimental results validate the effectiveness of our FDI method.