Comparison of fault detection and isolation methods for a small unmanned aircraft

This paper compares three model-based methods for detecting and isolating stuck control surface faults on a small unmanned aircraft. The first method is parity-space based and compares a sensor measurement against a model-based prediction of the same quantity. The second method is observer-based and involves robust estimation for linear parameter-varying systems. The third method is also observer-based and involves multiple model adaptive estimation. The performance of the three methods are compared using flight data. The comparison shows that the three methods have different detection performance and runtime. The selection of a particular method depends on the application requirements and implementation constraints.