Fault tolerant flight control system design for unmanned air vehicles

The increase in cost and complexity of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has resulted in a shift in the design philosophy away from expendable systems towards systems with a high level of robustness and survivability. Traditionally, survivability is increased through redundancy of critical systems, but this increases weight, complexity and cost. Some other means need to be found that will allow the vehicle to navigate to a specified point and land safely after a system or actuator failure. This paper presents a new approach to UAV Fault Tolerant Control via Model Predictive Control (MPC) technology. MPC is used to design a fault tolerant controller for a UAV, and its performance in the event of actuator failure is simulated and results are interpreted.