Actuator Fault Detection for Unmanned Ground Vehicles using Unknown Input Observers

This paper proposes an actuator fault detection method for four wheel unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) dynamics. The detection method is based on unknown input observers. Technical novelty of current work compared to similar work in the literature is that wheel frictions are directly taken into account in the dynamics of UGV, and unknown input observers are developed accordingly. The vehicle dynamics is represented into linear parameter varying system and an actuator fault detection method is derived using unknown input observers for linear parameter varying (LPV) systems. The effectiveness of proposed method is evaluated under various operation scenarios of the UGV.