Multiple-Actuator Fault Isolation Using a Minimal <i>ℓ</i>₁-Norm Solution with Applications in Overactuated Electric Vehicles

A multiple-actuator fault isolation approach for overactuated electric vehicles (EVs) is designed with a minimal ℓ1-norm solution. As the numbers of driving motors and steering actuators increase beyond the number of controlled variables, an EV becomes an overactuated system, which exhibits actuator redundancy and enables the possibility of fault-tolerant control (FTC). On the other hand, an increase in the number of actuators also increases the possibility of simultaneously occurring multiple faults. To ensure EV reliability while driving, exact and fast fault isolation is required; however, the existing fault isolation methods demand high computational power or complicated procedures because the overactuated systems have many actuators, and the number of simultaneous fault occurrences is increased. The method proposed in this paper exploits the concept of sparsity. The underdetermined linear system is defined from the parity equation, and fault isolation is achieved by obtaining the sparsest nonzero component of the residuals from the minimal ℓ1-norm solution. Therefore, the locations of the faults can be obtained in a sequence, and only a consistently low computational load is required regardless of the isolated number of faults. The experimental results obtained with a scaled-down overactuated EV support the effectiveness of the proposed method, and a quantitative index of the sparsity condition for the target EV is discussed with a CarSim-connected MATLAB/Simulink simulation