Qualitative fault tolerance analysis for a class of hybrid systems

This paper investigates the fault tolerance problem of hybrid systems with faults that affect the switching sequence. A hierarchical model is developed, which consists of four parts from bottom to top: hybrid automata, qualitative abstraction, discrete abstraction, and supervisor. Under this model, the reachability and fault tolerability properties of hybrid systems can be analyzed in a qualitative manner and from discrete-event system point of view. Sufficient conditions are given to maintain the system’s ideal (or acceptable) performance in spite of faults. Several numerical examples and an application to hose insertion task illustrate the efficiency of the proposed method.