Passive Actuator Fault-Tolerant Control for a Class of Overactuated Nonlinear Systems and Applications to Electric Vehicles

This paper presents a passive actuator fault-tolerant (FT) controller for a class of overactuated nonlinear systems and its experimental investigations on an electric vehicle. As the actuator fault information is unknown before the fault detection and diagnosis procedure finishes, the passive FT control is of great necessity in maintaining system stability and achieving acceptable performance. In this paper, three types of actuator faults are considered, and a passive FT controller that works for all of the studied fault types is designed. By grouping control efforts that have similar effects on the system into the same subsystem, the proposed control method can automatically distribute the higher level control signals to the actuators while minimizing a defined cost function. The FT control method was applied to control of a four-wheel-independently-actuated (FWIA) electric ground vehicle. Experimental results obtained on a FWIA electric vehicle show the effectiveness of the proposed method.