Active Fault Tolerant Control of Remotely Operated Vehicles via Control Effort Redistribution

An active fault tolerant control technique for Underwater Remotely Operated Vehicles is proposed in this paper. The main objective is to develop a controller for the tracking problem, which is robust against possible actuator faults and failures. The main advantage of the proposed fault tolerant control scheme is to develop a unique controller, and thus a unique set of control parameters, regardless the presence of faults and failures. This is achieved through a redistribution of the control effort on the healthy actuators. Simulation results are provided to demonstrate the viability of the proposed fault accommodating technique.