Cascade ADRC-based fault-tolerant control for a PVTOL aircraft with potential actuator failures

This paper presents a novel reconfigurable control method for the planar vertical take-off and landing (PVTOL) aircraft with potential actuator failures. A cascade active disturbance rejection controller (ADRC) is used to counteract the adverse effects when the actuator failure occurs. The coordinate transformation is used for model decoupling due to the severe coupling between some variables. This approach does not require the accurate mathematical model of the controlled system and ensures that the reference input value can be tracked rapidly and accurately. The stability and safety of the aircraft is much improved in the event of actuator failures. Finally, the simulation results are given to show the effectiveness and performance of the developed method.