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This article considers the decentralized fractional-order fault-tolerant control problem for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) against wind disturbances and actuator faults in a directed communication network. A new composite adaptive disturbance observer-based decentralized fractional-order fault-tolerant control (CADOB-DFO-FTC) scheme, which incorporates fractional-order (FO) sliding-mode surfaces, nonlinear disturbance observers (NDOs), fuzzy wavelet neural networks (FWNNs), and robust controllers, is developed to achieve the attitude tracking control of networked UAVs in a decentralized way. Based on the FO sliding-mode surfaces, the NDOs are first developed to estimate the lumped uncertainties due to the aerodynamic parameter perturbations, wind disturbances, and actuator faults. Then, adaptive FWNNs with updating weighting matrices, mean vectors, and deviation vectors are constructed to effectively attenuate the adverse effects induced by the NDO estimation errors. Furthermore, to compensate the FWNN approximation errors, robust controllers are integrated into the developed control scheme to enhance the approximation abilities. It is shown that by using Lyapunov methods, all UAVs can track their attitude references. Finally, comparative simulation results are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sizes of wind turbines have been steadily increasing over the past decade, especially on offshore sites. The greater structural flexibility of such machines necessitates the development of reliable load mitigation techniques to alleviate the effects of asymmetric wind loads and fatigue. Given the importance of such techniques, this article proposes a reliable load mitigation scheme, referred to as “fault-tolerant individual pitch control,” for individually adjusting the pitch angle of wind turbine blades in the presence of blade pitch actuator faults. The proposed scheme consists of a collective pitch control augmented with an individual pitch control, and a fault detection and diagnosis system. Simulation results using an offshore wind turbine illustrate the effectiveness as well as fault-tolerance capability of the developed scheme compared to controlling the pitch angles collectively. The developed scheme not only ensures an almost equal output power with reduced loads on the turbine, but also tolerates the effects of possible faults in pitch actuators of the blades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an average dwell-time method for fault-tolerant control of a class of uncertain switched linear time-delay systems and also designs an algorithm to determine the parameters pertaining to the dwell-time condition. Compared to the literature results, this paper features the following: 1) the proposed method is independent of switching polices if switchings are slow enough in the average sense; 2) the proposed control design guarantees exponential stabilization of this class of time-delay linear systems with actuator faults; and 3) this method treats all actuators in a unified manner without a need to identify which are faulty or healthy actuators. The proposed method is applied to the water pollution control problem, for the first time, to deal with different ratios of stream flow rates to effluent flow rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a novel adaptive sliding-mode-based control allocation scheme for accommodating simultaneous actuator faults. The proposed control scheme includes two separate control modules with virtual control part and control allocation part, respectively. As a low-level control module, the control allocation/reallocation scheme is used to distribute/redistribute virtual control signals among the available actuators under fault-free or faulty conditions, respectively. In the case of simultaneous actuator faults, the control allocation and reallocation module may fail to meet the required virtual control signal, which will degrade the overall system stability. The proposed online adaptive scheme can seamlessly adjust the control gains for the high-level sliding mode control module and reconfigure the distribution of control signals to eliminate the effect of the virtual control error and maintain the stability of the closed-loop system. In addition, with the help of the boundary layer for constructing the adaptation law, the overestimation of control gains is avoided, and the adaptation ceases once the sliding variable is within the boundary layer. A significant feature of this study is that the stability of the closed-loop system is guaranteed theoretically in the presence of simultaneous actuator faults. The effectiveness of the proposed control scheme is demonstrated by experimental results based on a modified unmanned multirotor helicopter under both single and simultaneous actuator faults conditions with comparison to a conventional sliding mode controller and a linear quadratic regulator scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article presents a fixed-time accommodation strategy of actuator faults for hypersonic gliding vehicles (HGVs). The approach against actuator faults is incorporated by sliding mode control (SMC), bilimit homogeneity, and adaptive techniques, with consideration of practical constraints and model uncertainties. The resulting fault-tolerant attitude control law allows the fault compensation to be completed in a fixed time, in view of the limited time available for recovery of a faulty HGV. The effectiveness of the presented scheme is validated by comparing it to the finite-time fault accommodation scheme. Note to Practitioners—Hypersonic vehicles have drawn significant interests due to the features of super-fast and flexible maneuverability. The use of advanced fault-tolerant control (FTC) techniques is expected to guarantee safety during hypersonic vehicle operation. A challenging problem is how to counteract actuator faults promptly and effectively in the presence of practical constraints and model uncertainties. This article presents a fixed-time FTC algorithm for a hypersonic gliding vehicle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A fault-tolerant formation control (FTFC) strategy is proposed against severe actuator faults, applied to a team of wheeled mobile robots (WMRs). In the beginning, a team of WMRs is operating in a prescribed formation topology. As long as the robot(s) cannot complete the required mission due to severe actuator faults, the formation is reconfigured for the healthy WMRs to eliminate the fault effects. The new reconfiguration is determined by means of an optimal assignment scheme so that each healthy robot can be assigned to a unique position. Subsequently, each robot starts planning its trajectory to reach its new position in the new formation configuration by virtue of a hybrid genetic algorithm and particle swarm optimization (GA–PSO). As metaheuristic optimization techniques, such as GA and PSO, are unable to solve the optimization problem with continuous control inputs, control parameterization and time discretization (CPTD) method is, therefore, adopted to offer an approximate piecewise linearization of the control inputs. Thus, an approach with the integration of CPTD and GA–PSO is developed. This integrated approach enables that the time of achieving the configuration is minimized, while the physical constraints of WMRs and collision avoidance are explicitly considered. Finally, real-time experiments are conducted to validate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm compared with other optimization techniques, such as GA and PSO. Note to Practitioners—Cooperative unmanned systems have drawn significant interests in military and civilian applications. During missions’ execution, it is of great importance for cooperative unmanned systems to have fault-tolerance capabilities for achieving the desired mission when faults occur in one or more team members. A challenging problem is how to detect and isolate the fault and how to mitigate the fault effects on the whole mission. This article presents a fault-tolerant formation control strategy in the case of severe actuator fault occurrence in a team of wheeled mobile robots. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a fault-tolerant control (FTC) scheme for a hypersonic gliding vehicle to counteract actuator faults and model uncertainties. Starting from the kinematic and aerodynamic models of the hypersonic vehicle, the control-oriented model subject to actuator faults is built. The observers are designed to estimate the information of actuator faults and model uncertainties, and to guarantee the estimation errors for converging to zero in fixed settling time. Subsequently, the finite-time multivariable terminal sliding mode control and composite-loop design are pursued to enable integration into the FTC, which can ensure the safety of the postfault vehicle in a timely manner. Simulation studies of a six degree-of-freedom nonlinear model of the hypersonic gliding vehicle are carried out to manifest the effectiveness of the investigated FTC system. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]