Discrete-time distributed control and fault diagnosis for a class of linear systems

This paper presents a solution to the problem of decentralized control, fault detection and isolation for teams of cooperative autonomous mobile vehicles. The strategy is carried out in the discrete time domain. A local observer is used by each agent to estimate the overall state of the team. This estimate is, then, used both to compute its local control input and isolate faulty teammates, even in absence of direct communication with them. For diagnosis purposes, a set of residual vectors, each of them sensible to a fault occurring on a single vehicle, is designed and an adaptive threshold is derived in order to avoid false alarms. The approach is validated via numerical simulations involving 4 vehicles moving in formation in a 3D environment.