Robust multiple sensor fault-tolerant control for dynamic non-linear systems: Application to the aerodynamical twin-rotor system

The paper deals with the problem of designing sensor-fault tolerant control for a class of non-linear systems. The scheme is composed of a robust state and fault estimator as well as a controller. The estimator aims at recovering the real system state irrespective of sensor faults. Subsequently, the fault-free state is used for control purposes. Also, the robust sensor fault estimator is developed in a such a way that a level of disturbances attenuation can be reached pertaining to the fault estimation error. Fault-tolerant control is designed using similar criteria. Moreover, a separation principle is proposed, which makes it possible to design the fault estimator and control separately. The final part of the paper is devoted to the comprehensive experimental study related to the application of the proposed approach to a non-linear twin-rotor system, which clearly exhibits the performance of the new strategy.