Quadrotor Accelerometer and Gyroscope Sensor Fault Diagnosis with Experimental Results

This paper presents the design and real-time experimental results of a fault diagnosis scheme for inertial measurement unit (IMU) measurements of quadrotor unmanned air vehicles (UAVs). The objective is to detect, isolate, and estimate sensor bias fault in accelerometer and gyroscope measurements. Based on the quadrotor dynamics and sensor models under consideration, the effects of sensor faults are represented as virtual actuator faults in the quadrotor state equations. Two nonlinear diagnostic estimators are designed to provide structured residuals enabling the simultaneous detection and isolation of the sensor faults. Additionally, based on the detection and isolation scheme, two nonlinear adaptive estimators are employed for the estimation of the fault magnitude. The performance of the diagnosis method is evaluated and demonstrated through real-time flight experiments.