Sensor fault detection by sliding mode observer applied to an autonomous vehicle

This paper deals with sensors faults detection and isolation using method by observers. The principle is to reconstruct the state vector and measurements of the system by sliding mode observers and compare the estimated outputs with those measured. In this work, a multi observer´s technique is used. It consists on construction of many observers, at least one observer for each output (sensor measurement). Each observer must be robust to noises and to other uncertainties but sensitive to sensor faults. The residual is the estimation error witch is the difference between sensor measurement and its estimated. Without failure in the sensor, this residual remains around zero and if a fault is occurred, it deviates significantly from zero. This method is applied to an autonomous electric vehicle called RobuCar. Simulation results are given at the end to show the effectiveness of the approach.