Nonlinear Fault-Tolerant Control of a Quadrotor UAV Based on Sliding Mode Control Technique

Abstract

In this paper, a sliding mode based fault-tolerant control (SM-FTC) is designed, implemented and tested in a quadrotor unmanned small helicopter under the propeller damage and actuator fault conditions. Based on the concept of sliding mode control, both passive and active fault-tolerant control laws have been designed and experimentally testbed on a quadrotor UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) testbed available at Concordia University. These two types of controllers are carried out and compared through both theoretical analyses and experimental tests on the quadrotor UAV system.