Fault Detection of an Actuator with Dual Type Motors and One Common Motion Sensor

Abstract

In urban aerial mobility (UAM), the blade pitch angle is adjusted for flight control. Electro-mechanical actuators based on redundant motors have been used for controlling the blade pitch angle. This study addresses the problem of detecting faults in such redundant motors. In particular, the system is composed of two redundant motors using one common sensor for acquiring rotation-related information. In this study, the authors do not use current signals that have been widely used for fault detection in previous studies. Instead, we propose a method of modulating control signals with time-varying weights for determining a faulty motor. The proposed method is verified through simulation examples and experiments.