Design and validation of a reconfiguration strategy for a redundantly actuated intelligent autonomous vehicle

Design and validation of the reconfiguration strategy for a redundantly actuated intelligent autonomous vehicle T K Bera, R Merzouki, B Ould Bouamama and A K Samantaray 1 LAGIS, UMR CNRS 8219, Polytech’Lille, Avenue Paul Langevin, 59655 Villeneuve d’Ascq, France 2 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, 721302 Kharagpur, India Abstract: This article deals with the reconfiguration of an intelligent autonomous vehicle which implements automatic navigation method and online supervision system to improve the safety, traffic management and space optimization inside the confined space of sea ports. The bond graph model of the vehicle dynamic system is developed in a modular and hierarchical modelling environment. The over actuated vehicle with redundant actuators has four independent driven wheels, four independent braking wheels and four wheel steering system. This vehicle can be safely operated with appropriate control law restructuring even when some of its actuators are unusable due to some fault. For actuator fault detection, Analytical Redundancy Relations (ARRs), which are constraint relations describing nominal system behaviour and are written in terms of the measured system variables, are derived from the bond graph model. ARRs are continuously evaluated to generate residual signals and the symptoms in these signals are monitored for actuator fault detection and isolation. Once one or more actuator faults are isolated, the system is reconfigured with selection of a proper operating mode to prevent critical or accidental situations. This procedure is validated by considering a fault scenario with two reconfiguration options.