Fault severity based Integrated Fault Tolerant Controller for quadrotor UAVs

In this paper, we propose an Integrated Fault Tolerant Controller (IFTC) for quadrotor UAVs based on Sliding Mode Passive and Active FTCs, along with Trirotor conversion maneuver. A Sliding Mode Observer is used to detect and estimate actuator faults affecting rotors, and a fault severity based decision station activates the suitable controller. The new controller not only ensures fault tolerance, but also saves actuator resources, and processor computational effort. Simulation results in SIMULINK environment, applied on Astec Pelican quadrotor model, emphasize the performance of the Integrated FTC controller in presence of multiple actuator faults.