A fault tolerant control design for automatic steering control of ground vehicles

A fault tolerant control approach that combines the optimal properties of Linear Quadratic Regulator (LQR) design with an observer based fault detection scheme is proposed for the steering control of a ground vehicle subject to sensor faults. In the proposed approach the linear quadratic regulator is used to steer the ground vehicle along a reference line in the lane, while maintaining small steady state error with minimum control cost. The system is augmented with an observer based fault detection method to detect, identify and accommodate sensor faults, when they occur. Computer simulations show the effectiveness of the proposed fault tolerant control strategy under various driving conditions. Simplicity of the overall scheme, minimization of the required energy and the stabilization of the system under both faulty and fault free conditions are the main positive features of the proposed approach.