A Compensative Fault Tolerant Control Algorithm for Quadrotor’s Attitude Control System

Quadrotors are becoming increasingly popular both in academic and industrial research since they have great maneuverability, hovering ability as well as the capability of advanced autonomous missions that are currently not possible for other vehicles. However, one or several of multiple rotors of a quadrotor may encounter some unexpected problems, which may result into a system failure. In this article, a new compensative fault tolerant control algorithm based on adaptive control theory was proposed to deal with this kind of problems. Firstly, a mathematical model of quadrotors' attitude control system was established. Then, based on the adaptive control theory, a fault-tolerant controller was designed and the asymptotic stability of the system is proved with Lyapunov stability theory. At last, the performance of this algorithm was verified by a simulation experiment which was set under the condition of unknown external disturbances and limited actuator faults.