Experimental evaluation of fault diagnosis in a skew-configured UAV sensor system

This paper presents an experimental evaluation of a hybrid fault detection and isolation scheme against three successive faults in skew-configured inertial sensors of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). An additional small and low-cost inertial measurement unit is installed with a skewed angle to a primary inertial measurement unit. A parity space method and an in-lane monitoring method are combined to increase system tolerance to the occurrence of multiple successive faults during flight. The first and second faults are detected and isolated by the parity space method. The third fault is detected by the parity space method and isolated by the in-lane monitoring method based on the discrete wavelet transform. Hardware in-the-loop tests and flight experiments with a fixed-wing UAV are performed to verify the performance of the proposed fault diagnosis scheme.

Research Highlights
► Low-cost inertial measurement unit (IMU) is installed with a skewed angle to primary IMU.
► Parity space method is combined with in-lane monitoring method to isolate successive faults.
► First and second faults are detected and isolated by parity space method.
► Third fault is detected by parity method and isolated by in-lane monitoring method based on wavelet transform.
► Proposed fault diagnosis scheme is verified through flight tests of unmanned aircraft.