Robust Reduced Order Thau Observer With the Adaptive Fault Estimator for the Unmanned Air Vehicles

Developing fault detection and diagnoses algorithms for the unmanned air vehicles such as the quadrotors is challenging since they are intrinsically non-linear, time-varying, unstable, and uncertain. This paper develops a reduced order Thau observer by only considering the uncertain rotational dynamics, which are re-constructed as the dominant linear and non-linear for the design purpose. Therefore, the proposed Thau observer is just third order and can reveal a rotational state estimation error in the presence of the quadrotor faults. This paper also equips the proposed Thau observer with a simple online adaptive fault estimation law, which is able to recognize up to two faulty actuators instantly using the estimated rotational state error. Lyapunov analysis confirms the error convergence in both the Thau observer states and the adaptive fault estimates. In addition, this paper constructs a batch type least-squares projection approach to quantify the magnitude percentages of the actuator failures. Moreover, to show the feasibility of the proposed algorithm, this paper extensively analyses the fault detection and diagnosis results performed in the simulation and real-time environments. Finally, to demonstrate the superiority of the proposed algorithm, it is compared with a recent Kalman filter based quadrotor fault estimation research under the equal conditions.