TGTV: An Interpretable Framework for UAV Fault Detection and Traceability via Spatiotemporal Graph Learning and Large Language Models

Abstract

Fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles experience operating-condition transitions, asynchronous sensor sampling, and control-system compensation that can obscure fault signatures. Existing temporal detection methods have limited capacity to represent coupled faults across subsystems, track their evolution, and constrain language-model diagnoses with quantitative evidence. This paper proposes TGTV, an interpretable fault detection and traceability framework that integrates spatiotemporal graph learning with a large language model. A temporal convolutional network and a graph attention network with weighted fused adjacency extract multiscale temporal patterns and spatial dependencies among sensors. A hybrid temporal Transformer and variational autoencoder then evaluates window-level anomalies using prediction errors and reconstruction probabilities. Continuous-time Shapley attribution identifies critical sensors and high-contribution intervals while preserving the temporal continuity of fault evolution. A structured evidence package combines detection results, graph relationships, temporal attribution, sensor attribution, and operating context. An evidence-constrained diagnosis protocol uses this package to generate flight-level conclusions with traceable evidence identifiers. Cross-flight holdout experiments on the public ALFA fixed-wing flight dataset yield a window-level area under the precision-recall curve of 0.976, accuracy of 0.973, recall of 0.902, and F1 score of 0.920. Flight-level fault diagnosis achieves recall of 0.943 and an F1 score of 0.944. These results demonstrate accurate anomaly detection and quantitatively supported fault-tracing cues, providing a basis for interpretable post-flight fault review and analysis.