Thruster fault diagnosis method based on Gaussian particle filter for autonomous underwater vehicles

Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) generally work in complex marine environments. Any fault in AUVs may cause significant losses. Thus, system reliability and automatic fault diagnosis are important. To address the actuator failure of AUVs, a fault diagnosis method based on the Gaussian particle filter is proposed in this study. Six free-space motion equation mathematical models are established in accordance with the actuator configuration of AUVs. The value of the control (moment) loss parameter is adopted on the basis of these models to represent underwater vehicle malfunction, and an actuator failure model is established. An improved Gaussian particle filtering algorithm is proposed and is used to estimate the AUV failure model and motion state. Bayes algorithm is employed to perform robot fault detection. The sliding window method is adopted for fault magnitude estimation. The feasibility and validity of the proposed method are verified through simulation experiments and experimental data. Copyright (C) 2016 Society of Naval Architects of Korea. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).