Fault Diagnosis and Fault Tolerant Control for $${{n}}$$-Linked Two Wheel Drive Mobile Robots

This chapter presents Fault Diagnosis (FD) and Fault Tolerant Control (FTC) schemes for multiple physically linked mobile robots. A nonlinear dynamic observer is designed not only to estimate the actuator fault signal (to perform the Fault Diagnosis) but also to estimate the states that are needed in the feedback control law. Firstly, a system with three two-wheel drive (2WD) mobile robots subjected to multiplicative and additive actuators faults was considered. Secondly, the method was generalized for $$nth$$ order mobile robots. A case study is presented by considering the problem of trajectory tracking of three physically linked 2WD mobile robots. The simulations were performed using the MATLAB/SIMULINK software, and it is shown that the nonlinear adaptive observer is suitable for the estimation of both the system state-space variables and the parameter associated with the actuator faults.