Reconfigurable Fault-tolerant Control: A Tutorial Introduction

This paper provides a tutorial introduction to reconfigurable control and surveys recent advances on this topic. Control reconfiguration is an important method of fault-tolerant control that uses the results of a fault diagnosis component to restructure the control loop and to adapt the controller to the faulty plant. This paper describes recent approaches that are suitable for on-line application. These approaches lead to a redesign of the controller or augment the control loop with a reconfiguration block that adapts the nominal controller to the dynamical properties of the faulty plant. The approaches are illustrated by means of a running example and experimental applications of selected methods. Challenges for future research in the field are stated.