Adaptive Fault Tolerant Control for VTOL Aircraft with Actuator Redundancy

In the aerospace industry, safety and reliability drive the need to maintain controlled flight in the event of a single actuator failure. For VTOL systems with automatic flight functions and a high coupling between actuator forces and control axes, digital flight control is key to enhancing fault tolerance. This thesis presents an adaptive fault tolerant controller for VTOL multicopters that considers actuator redundancy and limits and implements a strategy for degraded control authority. The solution combines predictor-based adaptive control allocation (P-ACA), prioritizing control allocation (PRIO CA) and parameter reduction due to overactuation (PRO). Flight tests with representative failure cases and high-speed scenarios are presented. A single unified controller handles the nominal and faulty cases.