Health-aware and fault-tolerant control of an octorotor UAV system based on actuator reliability

Abstract

A major goal in modern flight control systems is the need for improving reliability. This work presents a health-aware and fault-tolerant control approach for an octorotor UAV that allows distributing the control effort among the available actuators based on their health information. However, it is worth mentioning that, in the case of actuator fault occurrence, a reliability improvement can come into conflict with UAV controllability. Therefore, system reliability sensitivity is redefined and modified to prevent uncontrollable situations during the UAV’s mission. The priority given to each actuator is related to its importance in system reliability. Moreover, the proposed approach can reconfigure the controller to compensate actuator faults and improve the overall system reliability or delay maintenance tasks.