Actuator Fault Detection and Isolation for Robot Manipulators with the Adaptive Observer

The fault detection and isolation (FDI) for industrial robot manipulators, subject to faults of actuator, is devised in this paper. An adaptive observer is designed to tackle the robustness problem for unknown parameters due to faults，based on a bank of state observers. By using an adaptive regulating algorithm, the observer is ensured to be stable and the estimated errors are guaranteed to converge. Experimental results are reported for a planar robot under gravity, considering partial failures of the motor torques.