Fault-Tolerant Control of Quadcopter Integrating Rotor Thrust Estimation and Nonlinear Model Predictive Control

Abstract

This study presents a method for fault diagnosis and fault-tolerant control of a quadcopter. The thrust of each rotor is estimated by solving a least-squares problem that considers the relationship between the acceleration, angular velocity, and thrust of the quadcopter. The ratio of the estimated thrust to the control input is then used for fault diagnosis, which is integrated into nonlinear model predictive control. This approach enables a single controller to handle a wide range of faults regardless of the degree of rotor effectiveness loss or the position and number of failed rotors. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed method is verified through several simulations that assume an actual quadcopter.