Fault detection of actuator faults in unmanned underwater vehicles

A fault-diagnostic system for unmanned underwater vehicles has been designed and tested in real operating conditions. Actuator faults have been considered, relying on approximate models of the vehicles' dynamics. Fault detection and diagnosis is accomplished by evaluating any significant change in the behaviour of the vehicle. This task is performed by a bank of estimators: a filter is implemented for reach actuator fault type, including the no-fault case. The estimators used are extended Kalman filters (EKF), due to the presence of nonlinearities in the dynamic models. Experimental results are reported, to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.