VDM Omerdic, E: Thruster Fault-Tolerant Control

Remotely operated underwater vehicles are used for different tasks (survey, exploration, salvage etc.). However, these vehicles are liable to faults or failures during missions. Thrusters are one of the most common and most important sources of faults. In all but the most trivial cases the existence of a fault may lead to cancelling the mission. The implication of small faults can be very expensive (ship time is very costly) and time consuming. A large number of underwater vehicles represent overactuated control systems, i.e. they have four or more horizontal thrusters for the motion in the horizontal plane in three DOF (surge, sway and yaw). For this class of vehicle this book introduces a novel thruster Fault Diagnosis and Accommodation System (FDAS), with the ability of automatic thruster fault detection and accommodation. It shows you how, in the case of a partial or total fault in a thruster, to reconfigure the control system in an optimal manner, in order to maintain a high level of manoeuvrability of the faulty vehicle and complete the mission. With this book you get all you need to enhance your existing ROV control system with thruster fault-tolerant capabilities.