Tracking Error Based Fault Tolerant Scheme for Marine Vehicles with Thruster Redundancy

Abstract: This paper proposes an active model-based fault and failure tolerant control scheme for a class of marine vehicles with thruster redundancy. Unlike widely used state and parameter estimation methods, where the estimation errors are utilized to generate residual, in this paper we directly apply the trajectory tracking error terms to construct residual and detect thruster fault and failure in the steady state of the tracking system. As for identification or diagnosis, this paper proposes a novel scheme through a detailed examination of the tracking error trends and the combinations of thruster configurations. Since this fault detection and identification operates within the same closed-loop of the tracking control system, control reconfiguration can be easily achieved by adjusting the weight parameter of the isolated thruster to minimize tracking errors or residual. Numerical studies with the real world vehicle model is also carried out to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.