Active Disturbance Rejection based approach for Fault Tolerant Control of a Quadcopter

Prachetas P¹    Dinesh Viswas²    Harikumar Kandath³    Pooja Agrawal¹   

¹ School of Robotics DIAT (DU), Girinagar, Pune    ² BITS Pilani Goa Campus, Goa, India    ³ Robotics Research Center, IIIT Hyderabad, India   

This paper proposes a fault-tolerant control strategy addressing partial-to-complete propeller effectiveness loss through a dual-equilibrium framework. Two operating regimes are established based on a fault severity threshold: (i) below-threshold conditions maintain full actuation, (ii) above-threshold operation stabilizes hover dynamics by relinquishing yaw control. An Extended State Observer (ESO)-based Active Disturbance Rejection Control (ADRC) estimates and compensates for combined disturbances, including fault-induced effects and unmodeled dynamics. High-fidelity nonlinear simulations demonstrate the framework's effectiveness in maintaining attitude stabilization and position tracking during fault scenarios. The results validate that intentional yaw decoupling in severe faults preserves roll/pitch stability while ESO-ADRC ensures robust disturbance rejection, offering practical fault accommodation for propeller-driven systems.