Reliable flight performance assessment of multirotor based on interacting multiple model particle filter and health degree

Abstract Multirotor has been applied to many military and civilian mission scenarios. From the perspective of reliability, it is difficult to ensure that multirotors do not generate hardware and software failures or performance anomalies during the flight process. These failures and anomalies may result in mission interruptions, crashes, and even threats to the lives and property of human beings. Thus, the study of flight reliability problems of multirotors is conductive to the development of the drone industry and has theoretical significance and engineering value. This paper proposes a reliable flight performance assessment method of multirotors based on an Interacting Multiple Model Particle Filter (IMMPF) algorithm and health degree as the performance indicator. First, the multirotor is modeled by the Stochastic Hybrid System (SHS) model, and the problem of reliable flight performance assessment is formulated. In order to solve the problem, the IMMPF algorithm is presented to estimate the real-time probability distribution of hybrid state of the established SHS-based multirotor model, since it can decrease estimation errors compared with the standard interacting multiple model algorithm based on extended Kalman filter. Then, the reliable flight performance is assessed with health degree based on the estimation result. Finally, a case study of a multirotor suffering from sensor anomalies is presented to validate the effectiveness of the proposed method.