Fault/Damage Tolerant Control of a Quadrotor Helicopter UAV using Model Reference Adaptive Control and Gain-Scheduled PID

Abstract

In this paper, two useful approaches to Fault Tolerant Control (FTC) for a quadrotor helicopter Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) in the presence of fault(s) in one or more actuators during flight have been investigated and experimentally tested based on a Model Reference Adaptive Control (MRAC) and a Gain-Scheduled Proportional-IntegralDerivative (GS-PID) control. A Linear Quadratic Regulator (LQR) controller is used in cooperation with the MRAC and the GS-PID to control the pitch and roll attitudes of the helicopter. Unlike the MRAC, the GS-PID is used only to control the helicopter in height control mode. MRAC is used to control the helicopter in both height control as well as trajectory control. For damage tolerant control the MRAC is evaluated based on partial damage of one of propellers during flight. Finally, the experimental flight testing results of both controllers are presented for the fault tolerant control performance comparison in the presence of actuator faults in the quadrotor UAV.