Fault-Tolerant Control

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Overview

Fault-tolerant control studies how systems can keep operating safely when actuators, sensors, communications, or other components fail or degrade. Common approaches include fault detection and estimation, adaptive control, model-predictive control and control reallocation, alongside learned policies and runtime safety monitors. Methods are tested in settings such as aircraft and spacecraft, drones, legged robots, vehicles, and industrial processes, using both simulations and hardware experiments. A central challenge is handling unfamiliar or simultaneous faults while balancing fast recovery, sustained performance, and guarantees of safety.

Latest papers

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26 papers1 paper in the last four weeks, down 80% on the four weeks before. 0.0% of all new papers.

  1. Test-Time Adaptation of Manipulation Policies Under Actuator Degradation

    Sep 28, 2026Som Sagar, Ransalu SenanayakeRobotic ControlRobot Policy Adaptation

    School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona

  2. SG-CPG: Severity-Gated Central Pattern Generators for Adaptive Quadruped Locomotion under Continuous Actuator Degradation

    Sep 22, 2026Adarsh Kumar Kosta, Kaushik RoyDynamical SystemsFault-Tolerant Control

    Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47906, USA

  3. RAYA: Learning Where and When to Intervene for Robot Recovery

    Sep 18, 2026Ishaan Mahajan, Charles Chen, Frederike Dümbgen +1Robot Failure RecoveryReal-Time Robot Control

    College of Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA. · Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA.

  4. Constraint-Unified MPC for Over-Actuated Surface Vehicles with Post-Detection Fault Reconfiguration

    Sep 17, 2026Sebastian Burmester, Ruiheng Jiang, Noa Sendlhofer +2Unmanned Surface VehicleRobot Trajectory Tracking

    Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control (IDSC), ETH Zürich, Switzerland

  5. Residual Fault Adaptation for Dexterous In-Hand Manipulation Under Runtime Joint Faults

    Sep 15, 2026Linan Deng, Xing Liu, Lin Hong +4Dexterous ManipulationRobotic Manipulation

    Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong, China · School of Mechanical Science and Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China · School of Artificial Intelligence and Automation, MOE Key Lab of Intelligent Control and Image Processing, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China

  6. Resilient Control Loops in Autonomous Vehicles Under Adversarial Jamming via Spectral Perception and Network-Layer Failover

    Sep 4, 2026Luis Barajas, Colin Jeardoe, Jaewon Kim +1Wireless CommunicationsFault-Tolerant Control

    iSTAR Laboratory · Department of Engineering Technology and Industrial Distribution, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA · Global Cyber Research Institute (GCRI)

  7. Privileged Critic Training Enables Sensor-Free Thruster Fault Adaptation in End-to-End RL

    Aug 24, 2026Ricard Marsal I Castan, Miguel A. Olivares-MéndezAsynchronous Advantage Actor-CriticFault-Tolerant Control

    University of Luxembourg

  8. A Safety-Driven Architectural Framework for Fail-Operational Drone Swarms in Critical Missions

    Aug 21, 2026Luiz Giacomossi, Zafer Yigit, Marwan Shakarna +4Safety-Critical ControlSwarm Robotics

  9. Provably Efficient Self-Calibrating Quantum Fault Tolerance

    Aug 6, 2026Weiyuan Gong, Hong-Ye HuQuantum LDPC CodesQuantum Error Correction

    School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Allston, MA 02134, USA · Department of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA

  10. A Morphing-Designed Hexarotor Prototype combining Practical Resilience and Efficiency

    Jul 17, 2026Murat Bronz, Mahmoud Hamandi, Elgiz Baskaya +2Aerial RoboticsFault-Tolerant Control

    Ecole Nationale de l’Aviation Civile, Toulouse, France · Center for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, New York University Abu Dhabi, Saadiyat Island, 129188, Abu Dhabi, UAE · Robotics and Mechatronics lab, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics & Computer Science, University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands +1

  11. Stress-Sharing: A Bio-Inspired Approach to Decentralized Fault Repair in Modular Spacecraft

    Jul 15, 2026Sidhdharth D. Sikka, Yue Shen, Shaoshuai MouModular RoboticsRobotics

    Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA · Manifold Research Group

  12. Self-Healing Visual Recovery for Autonomous Ground Vehicles Using Camera-Only Visual Odometry

    Jul 13, 2026Jakob Solberg Berntzen, Safia Fatima, Leon MoonenVisual NavigationRobot Navigation

    Simula Research Laboratory, Oslo, Norway · University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

  13. Programmable Synchronization Graphs for Adaptive and Fault-Tolerant Modular Miniature Robots

    Jul 8, 2026Okan Kulekcioglu, Arqam Bin Ahmad, Ines Garcia +3Dynamical SystemsModular Robotics

    Department of Mechanical Engineering, Bilkent University; Ankara, Türkiye. · International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory (INL); Braga, Portugal.

  14. A Tutorial on Autonomous Fault-Tolerant Control Using Knowledge-Grounded LLM Agents

    Jun 30, 2026Javal Vyas, Milapji Singh Gill, Artan Markaj +2Language Model-Based ControlFault-Tolerant Control

    Autonomous Industrial Systems Laboratory, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom · Institute of Automation Technology, Helmut Schmidt University, Hamburg, Germany

  15. From Detection to Action: Using LLM Agents for Fault-Tolerant Control

    Jun 26, 2026Javal Vyas, Milapji Singh Gill, Artan Markaj +2Multi-Agent LLM SystemsLanguage Model-Based Control

    Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom · Helmut Schmidt University, Hamburg, 22043, Germany

  16. What Actually Works for Spacecraft Fault-Tolerant Control: An Honest Settled-Gate Benchmark of Learned and Classical Methods

    Jun 24, 2026Alireza ShojaeiSafety-Critical ControlRobust Control

    Myers-Lawson School of Construction, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061 USA

  17. Reliability-Asymmetric Spacecraft Autonomy: Co-Designing a Capable Learned GNC Stack with a Verified, Adaptation-Aware Runtime Shield

    Jun 24, 2026Alireza ShojaeiLanguage Model-Based ControlFormal Verification

    Myers-Lawson School of Construction, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061 USA

  18. SwarmFly: A simulation platform for UAV swarm experiment design and validation

    Jun 23, 2026Abhishek Phadke, Karthik Kumar Vasudeva, Abhishek JoshiAerial RoboticsSwarm Robotics

    School of Engineering and Computing, Christopher Newport University · Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Texas Tech University · Department of Computer Science, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi

  19. FT-WBC: Learning Fault-Tolerant Whole-Body Control for Legged Loco-Manipulation

    Jun 23, 2026Yudong Zhong, Pengfei Mai, Sikai Guo +6Robotic ControlLegged Robotics

    1The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou) · 2The University of Hong Kong

  20. Preserving Full 6-DOF Actuation Under Abrupt Total Rotor Failures: Passive Fault-Tolerant Flight Control Using a Biaxial-Tilt Hexacopter

    Jun 4, 2026Yipeng Yang, Yiqiao Tang, Hao Zhang +6Aerial RoboticsRobot Failure Recovery

  21. Fault-Tolerant, Rigidity-Preserving Control of Inflatable Truss Robots

    May 19, 2026James Wade, Isaac Weaver, Mihai Stanciu +1Robot Trajectory TrackingRobust Control

    Ira A. Fulton College of Engineering, Mechanical Engineering Department, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, USA

  22. Passive Fault Tolerance through Tension-to-Thrust Feed-Forward: Hybrid Input-to-State Stability for Decentralized Multi-UAV Slung-Load Transport under Abrupt Cable Severance

    May 6, 2026Hadi Hajieghrary, Paul SchmittMulti-Robot SystemsRobot Failure Recovery

    Independent Researcher · Reynolds & Moore

  23. Learning Families of Fixed-Wing Aircraft Control Policies with Hypernetwork-Conditioned Reinforcement Learning

    Apr 3, 2026Dennis Marquis, Mazen FarhoodFault-Tolerant ControlRobust RL

    Kevin T. Crofton Department of Aerospace and Ocean Engineering, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061, USA

  24. Improving dependability in robotized bolting operations

    Nov 13, 2025Lorenzo Pagliara, Vincenzo Petrone, Violeta Redondo +3Industrial RoboticsRobotic Assembly

    Department of Information Engineering, Electrical Engineering and Applied Mathematics (DIEM), University of Salerno, Via Giovanni Paolo II, 132, Fisciano, 84084, Italy · GTD Science, Infrastructures & Robotics, Av. Leonardo Da Vinci, 2, Madrid, 28906, Spain · Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Centre for Automation and Robotics (CAR) UPM-CSIC, José Gutiérrez Abascal, 2, Madrid, 28006, Spain

  25. TransforMARS: Fault-Tolerant Self-Reconfiguration for Arbitrarily Shaped Modular Aerial Robot Systems

    Sep 17, 2025Rui Huang, Zhiyu Gao, Siyu Tang +4Multi-Robot Motion PlanningAerial Robotics

    Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117583 · Department of Mechanical Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117583

  26. Enhancing Hardware Fault Tolerance in Machines with Reinforcement Learning Policy Gradient Algorithms

    Jul 21, 2024Sheila Schoepp, Mehran Taghian, Shotaro Miwa +3RL ControlReinforcement Learning

    Department of Computing Science, University of Alberta, 8900 114 St NW, Edmonton, Alberta, T6G 2S4, Canada · Advanced Technology R&D Center, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, 8-1-1,Tsukaguchi-honmachi, Amagasaki-shi, Hyogo, 661-8661, Japan · Information Technology R&D Center, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, 5-1-1, Ofuna, Kamakura-shi, Kanagawa, 247-8501, Japan +1