Fault Tolerant Control of an Octoplane UAV Using Sliding Modes

Abstract

This paper introduces a fault tolerant control scheme based on an LPV Sliding Mode Control approach with Control Allocation, to take advantage of the accessible rotors in an octoplane. Modelling of the octoplane and a synthesis of the controller in the presence of uncertainty as well as faults/failures, is introduced in the paper. The FTC scheme is based on an on-line control allocation approach which utilises the effectiveness level of the rotors to redistribute the control signals to the healthy vertical rotors. Simulation results show good tracking performance and no visible degradation in the presence of uncertainties and faults/failures.