Design of Fixed-Time Fault-Disturbance Estimator for Emergency Rescue Quadrotor UAV Under Multi-Stage Mission...

Area of Science:

• Robotics and Control Systems
• Aerospace Engineering
• Fault Diagnosis and Fault Tolerance

Background:

• Quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are crucial for emergency rescue operations.
• Complex mission environments introduce various disturbances and faults, impacting UAV stability.
• Accurate estimation of these disturbances is vital for reliable UAV operation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the fixed-time fault-disturbance estimation for quadrotor UAVs during rescue missions.
• To develop an estimator capable of handling actuator faults and environmental disturbances.
• To ensure estimation convergence within a fixed time, independent of initial conditions.

Main Methods:

• A multi-stage disturbance model was established for takeoff, mission execution, and landing phases.
• A fixed-time fault-disturbance estimator with stage-dependent gains was designed.
• Matrix Lyapunov functions and fixed-time stability theory were employed for analysis.

Main Results:

• The proposed estimator achieves fixed-time convergence for angular-velocity and fault-disturbance errors.
• Bounded disturbance jumps at stage transitions were analyzed, and post-transition recovery was established.
• Simulations demonstrated accurate reconstruction of lumped disturbances and bounded estimation errors.

Conclusions:

• The developed fixed-time estimator effectively addresses fault-disturbance estimation challenges in rescue UAVs.
• The estimator ensures robust performance across different mission stages and recovers from disturbance variations.
• This work enhances the reliability and safety of quadrotor UAVs in critical rescue scenarios.