Output Feedback Active Fault Tolerant Control for a 3-DOF Laboratory Helicopter With Sensor Fault

In this paper, an output feedback-based active fault tolerant control (FTC) scheme is proposed for an unstable three degree-of-freedom (3-DOF) helicopter equipped only with angular position sensors, of which a single sensor can be faulty. Limited by the available outputs, existing fault estimation (FE) and FTC schemes cannot be applied to this helicopter because when the sensor measuring the elevation or travel angle is faulty, it does not satisfy the minimum-phase and matching conditions required by standard observers. To circumvent this problem, an adaptive interval observer is firstly designed as a fault detection and isolation (FDI) unit to indicate the occurrence and location of a fault, in contrast to the existing FDI methods that require a bank of observers and incur a high computational cost. Then a high-gain observer is combined with a sliding mode observer to form an FE unit that does not require the matching and minimum-phase conditions. Based on the estimate of the fault, an FTC scheme is constructed to ensure an H-infinity performance of the faulty system. Finally, physical experiments on the 3-DOF helicopter verify the effectiveness of the proposed scheme. Note to Practitioners-The 3-DOF lab helicopter serves as an ideal experimental platform for control strategies. In this paper, an active fault tolerant control (FTC) scheme is developed for a 3-DOF lab helicopter when any single sensor can be faulty. The helicopter is nonlinear and subject to external disturbances. There are only encoders measuring the attitude angles and no sensors for angular velocities. In this paper, we firstly design a fault detection and isolation (FDI) unit based on an adaptive interval observer to detect the fault and identify its location; it incurs a lower computational cost compared to existing methods that use a bank of observers. Then a high-gain observer is combined with a sliding mode observer to estimate the fault. Based on the estimate of the fault, an FTC scheme is constructed and designed using Linear Matrix Inequalities to ensure an H-infinity performance of the faulty system.