Fault-Tolerant Disturbance Observer Based Control for Altitude and Attitude Tracking of a Quadrotor

This paper presents an attitude and altitude fault-tolerant tracking control for a quadrotor using the Disturbance Observer Based Control (DOBC). A Newton-Euler model of the quadrotor is described and the fault-tolerant control problem is treated for small angles. An appropriate estimation gain is proposed for the considered system, which allows to impose desired closed loop performances. These closed loop performances are analysed, showing the boundedness properties, and highlighting the trade off between fault estimation and control effort. Numerical simulations are provided for testing the effectiveness of the proposed DOBC solution, which is compared with the classical backstepping controller in case of multiple actuation faults.