Fault tolerant control of differential drive mobile robots using sliding mode controller

An actuator fault tolerant controller for differential drive mobile robots is proposed using the sliding surface scheme for a loss of effectiveness (LOE) actuator fault. It is shown that an LOE actuator fault can be modeled as a matched input disturbance and hence the sliding mode controller due its inherent robustness property can perfectly cancel the actuator fault effect on the performance of the mobile robot without a need to a fault detection and isolation module. Experimental validation is conducted on Qbot-2 mobile robot to verify the efficiency of the proposed controller scheme.