Hardware in the Loop Simulation of Fault Tolerance Solutions of a Morphing Vertical Take Off and Landing Aircraft

Flying autonomous uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) in an urban environment requires safety measures to be in place to avoid crashes that could injure people nearby or cause damage to buildings/property. Through planning for common failures that may occur, the risk of flight in urban environments may be mitigated. In this study, a controller was designed to navigate a vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft through waypoints. Sensor failures and actuator failures were simulated. To account for sensor failures, artificial neural networks (ANN) were used to estimate sensor readings and replace failed sensors. Actuator failures may be accounted for by using the VTOL mechanism to maintain control when one of the fixed wing actuators fails. To ensure the effectiveness of the fault tolerance methods, a controller was designed and tested with hardware in the loop (HITL) simulation before it was deployed onboard an actual aircraft.