Distributed fault-tolerant control of modular and reconfigurable robots with consideration of actuator saturation

A novel decomposition-based distributed robust fault-tolerant control method is proposed for modular and reconfigurable robots based on joint torque sensing. The designed robust controller compensates for both model uncertainties and a class of actuator faults. In addition, the proposed scheme does not require a fault detection and diagnosis module, avoiding time delay associated with it. Furthermore, a radial basis function neural network-based compensation scheme is proposed to deal with the actuator saturation problem, which is especially critical when actuator fault has to be tolerated by the control system. Simulation results have shown the effectiveness of the presented method.