In this paper, robust decentralized actuator fault detection and estimation is considered for a class of non-linear large-scale systems. A sliding mode observer is proposed together with an appropriate coordinate transformation to find the sliding mode dynamics. Then, based on the features of the observer, a decentralized fault estimation strategy is proposed using an equivalent output error injection, and a decentralized reconstruction scheme follows by further exploiting the structure of the uncertainty which is allowed to have non-linear bounds. The estimation and reconstruction signals only depend on the available measured information and thus the proposed strategy can work on-line. The theoretical results which have been obtained are applied to an automated highway system. Simulation shows the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed scheme.