Sensor Faults Isolation in Networked Control Systems: Application to Mobile Robot Platoons

In networked control systems, sensor faults in a subsystem have a major influence on the entire network as the fault effect reaches the other subsystems through the network interconnections. In this paper, a fault diagnosis-oriented model is proposed for linear networked control systems that can be applied to the robotics platoon. In addition, this model can also be used to design distributed Unknown Input Observers (UIO) in each subsystem to accomplish weak sensor faults isolation by treating the network disturbances and fault propagation through the network as unknown inputs. A case study was developed in which the subsystems were represented by robots that are connected in a wireless communication-based leader-follower scheme. The simulation results show that the model successfully reproduces the expected behaviour of the robotics platoon in the presence of sensor faults. Furthermore, weak sensor faults isolation is also achieved by observing the residual signals produced by the UIOs in each of the subsystems.