Global Fixed-Time Fault-Tolerant Control for Tracked Vehicles with Hierarchical Unknown Input Observers

This paper addresses the issues of sensor failures and actuator faults in mining tracked mobile vehicles (TMVs) operating in harsh environments by proposing a global fixed-time fault-tolerant control strategy based on a hierarchical unknown input observer structure. First, a kinematic and dynamic model of the TMV is established considering side slip and track slip, and its linear parameter-varying (LPV) model is constructed through parameter-dependent linearization. Then, a distributed structure consisting of four collaborating low-dimensional observers is designed, including a state observer, a disturbance observer, a position sensor fault observer, and a wheel speed sensor fault observer, and the fixed-time convergence of the closed-loop system is proven. Additionally, by equivalently treating actuator faults as power losses, an observer capable of identifying and compensating for motor efficiency losses is designed. Finally, an adaptive fault-tolerant control law is proposed by combining nominal control, disturbance compensation, and sliding mode switching terms, achieving global fixed-time stability and fault tolerance. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed control system maintains excellent trajectory tracking performance even in the presence of sensor faults and actuator power losses, with tracking errors less than 0.1 m.