Learning-Based Passive Fault-Tolerant Control of a Quadrotor with Rotor Failure

Abstract

This paper proposes a learning-based passive fault-tolerant control (PFTC) method for quadrotor capable of handling arbitrary single-rotor failures, including conditions ranging from fault-free to complete rotor failure, without requiring any rotor fault information or controller switching. Unlike existing methods that treat rotor faults as disturbances and rely on a single controller for multiple fault scenarios, our approach introduces a novel Selector-Controller network structure. This architecture integrates fault detection module and the controller into a unified policy network, effectively combining the adaptability to multiple fault scenarios of PFTC with the superior control performance of active fault-tolerant control (AFTC). To optimize performance, the policy network is trained using a hybrid framework that synergizes reinforcement learning (RL), behavior cloning (BC), and supervised learning with fault information. Extensive simulations and real-world experiments validate the proposed method, demonstrating significant improvements in fault response speed and position tracking performance compared to state-of-the-art PFTC and AFTC approaches.