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The problem of speed control of a DC drive system with a variable moment-of-inertia load has recently been considered for the purpose of comparison of the performance of a non-linear adaptive control system and a classical linear control system. The results of this comparison apparently show that the performance of the adaptive controller is inferior to that of the linear control configuration under non-ideal conditions. This paper uses the same example to show that a simple adaptive controller can easily overcome the difficulties of this test.

Errors made in Chen and Cook (1984) in their discussion of Rohrs et al. (1982) are exposed. It is shown that these errors result from a lack of understanding of the concepts of Rohrs el al. (1982) and from a general lack of careful research. The approach and results of Rohrs et al. (1982) are further clarified as they relate to the results of Chen and Cook (1984).

This paper explores the stability of a class of multi-agent systems with proposed relay tracking strategy over a finite time interval. In this paper, agents are deployed in an area to monit...

The paper analyses a networked control system consisting of a linear time-invariant system with a static feedback nonlinearity, subject to large delays in the feedback loop. This model is valid for example in wireless data flow control, where a saturation occurs since the flow is one-directional. The present paper extends previous results by proving necessity, in case the loop gain is uniformly less than one. The results are validated and illustrated in a simulation study.

This paper considers the consensus tracking synthesised with transient performance improvement problem for a network of unmanned aerial vehicles with faults. In practical situations, the parameter variations, modelling errors and disturbances are of particular interest. Thus, it is assumed that the dynamics of vehicles are subject to parameter uncertainty. As the main contribution of this paper, a set of fault-estimator-based protocols is proposed to drive the overall network performance below the given H∞ synthesised with transient performance index. Sufficient conditions for designing the protocols which utilise the relative output information among neighbouring vehicles are given by applying the robust control theory. Simulations are performed to validate the proposed results.

In recent years, a lot of research efforts have been devoted to the application of sliding mode control (SMC) techniques to power electronic equipment and electrical drives. Hundreds of technical papers have been published in this research field. The tendency stems from the nature of sliding mode with discontinuous control actions and due to its potential for circumventing parameter variation effects along with low implementation complexity. This paper presents a control design procedure for DC/DC power converters. It develops SMC algorithms for several types of DC/DC converters with different control objectives, complete and incomplete information about system states. A chattering reduction approach for power converters based on the idea of multi-phase converters is also proposed. A wide range of MATLAB/SIMULINK computer simulations along with experimental results are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control design.

In this paper, the robust stability of a perturbed linear continuous-time system is examined when controlled using a sampled-data networked control system (NCS) framework. Three new robust stability bounds on the time-invariant perturbations to the original continuous-time plant matrix are presented guaranteeing stability for the corresponding discrete closed-loop augmented delay-free system (ADFS) with multiple time-varying sensor and actuator delays. The bounds are differentiated from previous work by accounting for the sampled-data nature of the NCS and for separate communication delays for each sensor and actuator, not a single delay. Therefore, this paper expands the knowledge base in multiple inputs multiple outputs (MIMO) sampled-data time delay systems. Bounds are presented for unstructured, semi-structured, and structured perturbations.

In this paper, a robust model predictive control (MPC) is designed for a class of constrained continuous-time nonlinear systems with bounded additive disturbances. The robust MPC consists of a nonlinear feedback control and a continuous-time model-based dual-mode MPC. The nonlinear feedback control guarantees the actual trajectory being contained in a tube centred at the nominal trajectory. The dual-mode MPC is designed to ensure asymptotic convergence of the nominal trajectory to zero. This paper extends current results on discrete-time model-based tube MPC and linear system model-based tube MPC to continuous-time nonlinear model-based tube MPC. The feasibility and robustness of the proposed robust MPC have been demonstrated by theoretical analysis and applications to a cart-damper springer system and a one-link robot manipulator.

This paper is devoted to the problem of designing an H2 and/or H∞ row-sparse static output feedback controller for continuous linear time-invariant systems with polytopic uncertainty. The immediate application of the proposed approach lies within the problem of the optimal selection of a subset of available actuators during the fault accommodation stage of a fault-tolerant control scheme. Incorporating an extra term for penalising the number of actuators into the optimisation objective function, we propose an explicit scheme and two iterative procedures according to the reweighted l1 (REL1) and reweighted iterative support detection (RISD) algorithms for the purposes of identifying the favourable row-sparse feedback gains. Furthermore, this problem formulation allows us to incorporate additional constraints into the designing problem such as regional pole placement constraints which provide more control over the satisfactory transient behaviour and closed-loop pole locations. In this paper, we pre...

Nonlinear model predictive control (NMPC) is a strong candidate to handle the control challenges emerging in the modern wind energy industry. Recent research suggested that wind turbine (WT) control based on economic NMPC (ENMPC) can improve the closed-loop performance and simplify the task of controller design when compared to a classical NMPC approach. This paper establishes a formal relationship between the ENMPC controller and the classic NMPC approach, and compares empirically their closed-loop nominal behaviour and performance. The robustness of the performance is assessed for an inaccurate modelling of the tower fore-aft main frequency. Additionally, though a perfect wind preview is assumed here, the effect of having a limited horizon of preview of the wind speed via the LIght Detection And Ranging (LIDAR) sensor is investigated. Finally, this paper provides new algorithmic solutions for deploying ENMPC for WT control, and report improved computational times.

This paper aims to address the leader–follower regulation problem of multi-agent systems with directed network topologies, where the agents are described by feedforward nonlinearities with the growth rate being unknown a priori. Both the state feedback regulation protocol and the output feedback regulation protocol are delicately constructed such that all the states of followers can converge to the leader state globally. In this paper, a model transformation is firstly performed and the leader–follower regulation problem can be transformed into a general regulation problem. Then, by introducing an appropriate state transformation, the regulation problem can be changed into a parameter determined problem. It is proved that the parameter can be determined by both the properties of M-matrices and the estimates of nonlinear terms. Finally, a numerical example is presented to show the feasibility of designed protocols.

This paper presents the exposition of an output-lifting eigenstructure assignment (EA) design framework, wherein the available EA design degrees of freedom (DoF) is significantly increased, and the desired eigenstructure of a single-rate full state feedback solution can be achieved within an output feedback system. A structural mapping is introduced to release the output-lifting causality constraint. Additionally, the available design DoF can be further enlarged via involving the input-lifting into the output-lifting EA framework. The newly induced design DoF can be utilised to calculate a structurally constrained, causal gain matrix which will maintain the same assignment capability. In this paper, the robustification of the output-lifting EA is also proposed, which allows a trade-off between performance and robustness in the presence of structured model uncertainties to be established. A lateral flight control benchmark in the EA literature and a numerical example are used to demonstrate the eff...

The nonlinear disturbance observer (NDO) proposed by W. H. Chen et al. needs an assumption that the disturbance varies slowly relative to the observer dynamics (i.e. d˙(t)≈0), so as to ensure the convergence of the disturbance observer. When d˙(t)≠0, however, there is no guarantee of the convergence in theory. To solve the problem, this paper presents a new NDO, namely high-order nonlinear disturbance observer (HONDO), for a nonlinear system with an unknown fast time-varying disturbance (i.e. d˙(t)≠0). The HONDO not only inherits all the advantages of the usual NDO, but also guarantees the convergence of the estimated error for a nonlinear system with a fast time-varying disturbance. Therefore, the HONDO proposed in this paper broadens the application scope of the conventional NDOs, thus is a supplement to the theory of NDO. The numerical simulation for the cruise control of an air-breathing hypersonic vehicle further verifies the effectiveness of the HONDO-based control.

This paper presents a robust dc-link voltage as well as a current control strategy for a bidirectional interlink converter (BIC) in a hybrid ac/dc microgrid. To enhance the dc-bus voltage control, conventional methods strive to measure and feedforward the load or source power in the dc-bus control scheme. However, the conventional feedforward-based approaches require remote measurement with communications. Moreover, conventional methods suffer from stability and performance issues, mainly due to the use of the small-signal-based control design method. To overcome these issues, in this paper, the power from DG units of the dc subgrid imposed on the BIC is considered an unmeasurable disturbance signal. In the proposed method, in contrast to existing methods, using the nonlinear model of BIC, a robust controller that does not need the remote measurement with communications effectively rejects the impact of the disturbance signal imposed on the BIC's dc-link voltage. To avoid communication links, the ...

This paper concerns with the problem of stabilisation of inertial coupling electromechanical system. The concept of inertial coupling electromechanical system is an interesting topic from the control theory point of view and its universe of applications. This is because, for stabilisation proposes, the complete model of electromechanical system significantly reduces higher frequency functions in their dynamics caused by high gain controllers. Here, the system stabilisation is achieved by applying nonlinear time-varying controllers. The reason to use a time-varying controller is to give some learning or adaptation in the control process. Moreover, to get a good result for the closed-loop system, the structure of a storage function is based on the classical quadratic function in addition to quadratic function of system total energy. So, the main goal of this paper is obtain a controller that guarantees that the system state error arrives near the required equilibrium in exponential form. Hence, the ...

This paper is concerned with robust stability analysis of discrete-time linear periodically time-varying (LPTV) systems using the cycling-based LPTV scaling approach. It consists of applying the separator-type robust stability theorem through the cycling-based treatment of such systems, where this paper aims at revealing fundamental properties of this approach when we confine ourselves to what we call finite impulse response (FIR) separators as a theoretically and numerically very tractable class of separators. Specifically, we clarify such properties of the cycling-based LPTV scaling approach using FIR separators that cannot readily be seen under the treatment of general class of separators. This is accomplished by comparing it with another approach, called lifting-based LPTV scaling using FIR separators, through the framework of representing the associated robust stability conditions with infinite matrices. More precisely, this leads us to clarifying the fundamental relationships between the cyc...

International audience; This paper addresses the important topic of electro-mechanical systems identification with an application in robotics. The standard inverse dynamic identification model with least squares (IDIM-LS) method of identifying models for robotic systems is based on the use of a continuous-time inverse dynamic model whose parameters are identified from experimental data by linear LS estimation. The paper describes a new alternative but related approach that exploits the state-dependent parameter (SDP) method of nonlinear model estimation and compares its performance with that of IDIM-LS. The SDP method is a two-stage identification procedure able to identify the presence and graphical shape of nonlinearities in dynamic system models with a minimum of a priori assumptions. The performance of the SDP method is evaluated on two electro-mechanical systems: the electro-mechanical positioning system and the second link of the TX40 robot. The experimental results demonstrate how SDP identification helps to avoid over-reliance on prior conceptions about the nature of the nonlinear characteristics and correct any deficiencies in this regard. Finally, a simulation study shows how the resulting SDP model is able to facilitate nonlinear control system design using linear-like design procedures.

In this paper, a super-twisting-like structure with adaptive gains is proposed. The structure is parameterised by two scalar gains, both of which adapt, and by an additional time-varying term. The magnitudes of the adaptive terms are allowed to both increase and decrease as appropriate so that they are as small as possible, in the sense that they do not unnecessarily over-bound the uncertainty, and yet are large enough to sustain a sliding motion. In the paper, a new time varying gain is incorporated into the traditional super-twisting architecture. The proposed adaption law has a dual-layer structure which is formally analyzed using Lyapunov techniques. The additional term has the effect of simplifying the stability analysis whilst guaranteeing the second-order sliding mode properties of the traditional super-twisting scheme.

This paper investigates the design of a novel estimation-free prescribed performance non-affine control strategy for the longitudinal dynamics of an air-breathing hypersonic vehicle (AHV) via back-stepping. The proposed control scheme is capable of guaranteeing tracking errors of velocity, altitude, flight-path angle, pitch angle and pitch rate with prescribed performance. By prescribed performance, we mean that the tracking error is limited to a predefined arbitrarily small residual set, with convergence rate no less than a certain constant, exhibiting maximum overshoot less than a given value. Unlike traditional back-stepping designs, there is no need of an affine model in this paper. Moreover, both the tedious analytic and numerical computations of time derivatives of virtual control laws are completely avoided. In contrast to estimation-based strategies, the presented estimation-free controller possesses much lower computational costs, while successfully eliminating the potential problem of pa...

This paper considers the problem of global stabilisation of a class of generalised cascaded systems. By using the extended adding a power integrator technique, a global controller is first constructed for the driving subsystem. Then based on the homogeneous properties and polynomial assumption, it is shown that the stabilisation of the driving subsystem implies the stabilisation of the overall cascaded system. Meanwhile, by properly choosing some control parameters, the global finite-time stability of the closed-loop cascaded system is also established. The proposed control method has several new features. First, the nonlinear cascaded systems considered in the paper are more general than the conventional ones, since the powers in the nominal part of the driving subsystem are not required to be restricted to ratios of positive odd numbers. Second, the proposed method has some flexible parameters which provide the possibility for designing continuously differentiable controllers for cascaded system...

The inclusion of smart devices in wind turbine rotor blades could, in conjunction with collective and individual pitch control, improve the aerodynamic performance of the rotors. This is currently an active area of research with the primary objective of reducing the fatigue loads but mitigating the effects of extreme loads is also of interest. The aerodynamic loads on a wind turbine blade contain periodic and non-periodic components and one approach is to consider the application of iterative learning control algorithms. In this paper the control design is based on a simple, in relative terms, computational fluid dynamics model that uses non-linear wake effects to represent flow past an airfoil. In this paper, a representation for the actuator dynamics is included to undertake a detailed investigation into the level of control possible and on how performance can be effectively measured.

In this paper, a novel fault detection and isolation (FDI) method for switching linear systems is developed. All input and output signals are assumed to be corrupted with measurement noises. In the proposed method, a ‘lifted’ linear model named as stochastic hybrid decoupling polynomial (SHDP) is introduced. The SHDP model governs the dynamics of the switching linear system with all different modes, and is independent of the switching sequence. The error-in-variable (EIV) representation of SHDP is derived, and is used for the fault residual generation and isolation following the well-adopted local approach. The proposed FDI method can detect and isolate the fault-induced abrupt changes in switching models’ parameters without estimating the switching modes. Furthermore, in this paper, the analytical expressions of the gradient vector and Hessian matrix are obtained based on the EIV SHDP formulation, so that they can be used to implement the online fault detection scheme. The performance of the proposed met...

Multiplexed model predictive control (MMPC) is a recently proposed efficient model predictive control (MPC) algorithm, which can effectively reduce the computational burden of the online optimisation in MPC implementation by updating the control inputs in an asynchronous manner. This paper investigates the application of MMPC in active vehicle suspension design. An MMPC controller integrated with soft constraints and a Kalman filter is proposed based on a full-car model. Ride comfort, roadholding and suspension deflection are considered in this paper, where ride comfort and roadholding are formulated as a quadratic cost function in terms of sprung mass accelerations and tyre deflections, while suspension deflection performance is formulated as a hard constraint. The saturation of the actuator force is also considered and formulated as a hard constraint as well. Numerical simulation is performed with respect to different choices of weighting factors, vehicle speeds and control horizons. The results show th...

This paper investigates the problem of swarm aggregations of heterogeneous multi-agent systems. Comparing with the existing studies on swarm aggregations of homogeneous multi-agent systems, this paper is much more resembling the practical situations, where the agents have different dynamics. We show that the heterogeneous agents will gather with a certain error under some assumptions and conditions. The stability properties have been proven by theoretical analysis and verified via numerical simulation. The stability of the heterogeneous multi-agent systems has been achieved based on matrix theory and the Lyapunov stability theorem. Numerical simulation is given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the theoretical result.

This paper addresses the distributed robust containment tracking problem of networked systems with uncertain linear dynamics and multiple controlled leaders. The uncertainty class considered in this paper satisfies some matched conditions. To achieve containment tracking in such a multi-agent system, some distributed controllers consisting of using relative state-based continuous feedback and a non-smooth manoeuvre are developed. By transforming the containment tracking problem into the global robust stabilisation problem of interconnected systems, it is shown that the states of followers will asymptotically converge to a convex hull formed by those of the leaders if the control parameters in the proposed controllers are appropriately selected. It is clearly pointed out that the involved control parameters can be successfully found for solving the containment tracking problem if each follower can be directly or indirectly influenced by at least one leader, and the nominal dynamics of followers are stabili...

This paper develops methods for model identification of aggregated thermostatically controlled loads (TCLs) in smart grids, via partial differential equation (PDE) techniques. Control of aggregated TCLs provides a promising opportunity to mitigate the mismatch between power generation and demand, thus enhancing grid reliability and enabling renewable energy penetration. To this end, this paper focuses on developing parameter identification algorithms for a PDE-based model of aggregated TCLs. First, a two-state boundary-coupled hyperbolic PDE model for homogenous TCL populations is derived. This model is extended to heterogeneous populations by including a diffusive term, which provides an elegant control-oriented model. Next, a passive parameter identification scheme and a swapping-based identification scheme are derived for the PDE model structure. Simulation results demonstrate the efficacy of each method under various autonomous and non-autonomous scenarios. The proposed models can subsequently be employed to provide system critical information for power system monitoring and control.

In this paper, we investigate new implementable cooperative adaptive backstepping controllers for a group of underactuated autonomous vehicles that are communicating with their local neighbours to track a time-varying virtual leader of which the relative position may only be available to a portion of the team members. At the kinematic cooperative control level of the autonomous underwater vehicle, the virtual cooperative controller is basically designed on a proportional and derivative consensus algorithm presented in Ren (2010), which involves velocity information from local neighbours. In this paper, we propose a new design algorithm based on singular perturbation theory that precludes the use of the neighbours’ velocity information in the cooperative design. At the dynamic cooperative control level, calculation of the partial derivatives of some stabilising functions which in turn will contain velocity information from the local neighbours is required. To facilitate the implementation of the cooperativ...

This paper exploits the analogy between the electrical grid and modern communication networks to implement Electric Vehicle (EV) battery charging scheduling algorithms inspired by popular communication network techniques. In preliminary works, a similar approach was used to manage the Grid-to-Vehicle (G2V) active power flows. In this paper, we extend this framework to both implement the Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) concept and to provide reactive power compensation capabilities that do not affect charging times. The ability of the proposed algorithms to optimally share the available/desired power in a fair way, with minimum communication requirements, in a very uncertain, dynamically changing framework, is illustrated through several examples for different scenarios of interest.

Several nonlinear proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controllers for robot manipulators that ensure global asymptotic stability have been proposed in the literature. However, the tuning criteria obtained are expressed in terms of conditions so restrictive that they have avoided, until now, carrying out experimental tests with such controllers. Tuning criteria of some PID controllers for robot manipulators with conditions more relaxed than those presented previously in the literature have been proposed in two recent works by the authors. This was achieved by setting the tuning conditions individually for each joint instead of general conditions for the whole robot. In this paper we extend these results to a class of nonlinear PID global regulators for robot manipulators. The obtained tuning criteria are given in terms of conditions so relaxed that they have allowed to carry out, for the first time, experimental essays with these controllers. Such experiments are presented in this paper using a two-degr...

In recent years, we have witnessed the publication in various control and applications journals of some papers where it is suggested to replace the tracking error-driven parameter estimator of direct model reference adaptive controller with a state prediction-driven one, used in indirect schemes. Moreover, it is suggested to compute the controller with a linear time-invariant filter and to use high adaptation gains. It has been claimed that these modifications improve the performance of the system. The objective of this paper is to discuss these claims with the simplest possible examples. The main contributions of the paper are, first, to reveal that the stabilisation mechanism is univocally determined by the filter and is independent of the parameter adaptation. Second, to prove that the condition for stability suggested in the literature cannot be verified, even in basic examples. Finally, to prove that the controller cannot ensure suitable tracking (or regulation) performance even for these examples.

In this paper, an active fault-tolerant control scheme is proposed in the case of actuator faults. In particular, the general idea of integrating fault identification and control schemes, which takes into account the fault estimation error is first presented in a linear context. As a result, the so-called separation principle for the controller and the fault identification scheme is developed. Subsequently, the proposed approach is extended to a class of non-linear systems. Similarly to the linear case, it is proven that using a suitable control strategy and a faulty identification scheme it is possible to obtain an integrated fault-tolerant control framework, which takes into account the fault identification error. As a result, a non-linear counterpart of the above-mentioned separation principle is developed. Finally, the last part of the paper shows the application results obtained using a twin-rotor system that confirm the high performance of the proposed approach.

The objective of this paper is to present a measurement-based control-design approach for single-input single-output linear systems with guaranteed bounded error. A wide range of control-design approaches available in the literature are based on parametric models. These models can be obtained analytically using physical laws or via system identification using a set of measured data. However, due to the complex properties of real systems, an identified model is only an approximation of the plant based on simplifying assumptions. Thus, the controller designed based on a simplified model can seriously degrade the closed-loop performance of the system. In this paper, an alternative approach is proposed to develop fixed-order controllers based on measured data without the need for model identification. The proposed control technique is based on computing a suitable set of fixed-order controller parameters for which the closed-loop frequency response fits a desired frequency response that meets the desired clos...

Linear controllers with gain scheduling have been successfully used in the control of nonlinear systems for the past several decades. This paper proposes the design of gain scheduled continuous-time model predictive controller with constraints. Using induction machine as an illustrative example, the paper will show the four steps involved in the design of a gain scheduled predictive controller: (i) linearisation of a nonlinear plant according to operating conditions; (ii) the design of linear predictive controllers for the family of linear models; (iii) gain scheduled predictive control law that will optimise a multiple model objective function with constraints, which will also ensure smooth transitions (i.e. bumpless transfer) between the predictive controllers; (iv) experimental validation of the gain scheduled predictive control system with constraints.

This paper makes contributions in the area of predictive control and in particular examines to what extent different methods for parameterising the degrees of freedom within the input trajectories can improve aspects of feasibility and performance. A few earlier papers have suggested the potential for Laguerre polynomials to be effective within a predictive control design, but without giving explicit design guidelines. This paper extends that work by looking not only at systematic choices for the Laguerre parameters but also other choices of orthogonal functions. Systematic mechanisms are discussed to choose the best tuned alternative parameterisation dynamics. The efficacy of the proposed parameterisations within existing predictive control algorithms are demonstrated by examples.

A natural way for cooperative tasking in multi-agent systems is through a top-down design by decomposing a global task into sub-tasks for each individual agent such that the accomplishments of these sub-tasks will guarantee the achievement of the global task. In our previous works [1], [2] we presented necessary and sufficient conditions on the decomposability of a global task automaton between cooperative agents. As a follow-up work, this paper deals with the robustness issues of the proposed top-down design approach with respect to event failures in the multi-agent systems. The main concern under event failure is whether a previously decomposable task can still be achieved collectively by the agents, and if not, we would like to investigate that under what conditions the global task could be robustly accomplished. This is actually the fault-tolerance issue of the top-down design, and the results provide designers with hints on which events are fragile with respect to failures, and whether redundancies are needed. The main objective of this paper is to identify necessary and sufficient conditions on failed events under which a decomposable global task can still be achieved successfully. For such a purpose, a notion called passivity is introduced to characterize the type of event failures. The passivity is found to reflect the redundancy of communication links over shared events, based on which necessary and sufficient conditions for the reliability of cooperative tasking under event failures are derived, followed by illustrative examples and remarks for the derived conditions., Preprint, Submitted for publication

The verifications of current-state opacity (CSO) and initial-state opacity (ISO) in discrete event systems (DESs) both suffer from the curse of dimensionality, as these issues were proved to be PSPACE-complete. Hence, how to reduce the state space is crucial. In this paper, we investigate CSO and ISO in modular DESs, which consist of several individual components. Necessary and sufficient conditions of CSO and ISO for modular DESs are derived under the assumption that all synchronous events are observable by each components of modular DESs. Moreover, we prove that the initial state estimator of modular system is isomorphic to the synchronous composition of initial state estimators for individual components. These results offer us the opportunity to reduce the complexity in verifying the opacity of modular DESs.

Spin-axis stabilisation of spacecraft is a problem of partial stabilisation for non-linear dynamical systems. In this article the analysis of spin-axis stabilisation of underactuated rigid spacecraft in the presence of sinusoidal disturbances is presented. By using the Euler-Poisson form to describe the equations of motion and assuming the disturbances in three axes are decoupled with known frequencies, the paper first studies the problem of the underactuated rigid axisymmetric spacecraft by applying the internal modal principle to eliminate the sinusoidal disturbance. Then the paper turns to the more complicated asymmetric spacecraft, where the boundedness of the angular velocity for the underactuated axis is analysed in detail. The paper also proves the global asymptotic stability of the closed-loop systems for both axisymmetric spacecraft and asymmetric spacecraft by combining the Lyapunov direct method with the LaSalle's theorem. The simulation results show that the proposed control law is effective in the presence of sinusoidal disturbance.

This paper addresses the problem of visual tracking using a conventional model reference adaptive control framework for it. The adaptive controller is capable of maintaining a relative position for a trailer vehicle with respect to a lead vehicle of unknown size. The only information about the lead vehicle can be deduced from the subtended angle in the image plane of the trailing vehicle. Neither the dimension of the lead vehicle, nor its velocity are assumed to be known to the follower. The control objective of maintaining a prespecified relative range is achieved via an intelligent excitation signal, the properties of which are analysed in this paper. Simulations illustrate the theoretical results.

Recently there has been an increasing interest in active fault detection when traditional approaches are not effective or cannot be used. Previous papers have shown how to construct continuously varying test (auxiliary) signals for use in fault detection and identification. Such signals may not always be easy to implement. In this paper a new algorithm is presented to compute optimal piecewise constant test signals. In the important case where the test signal changes values a small number of times, the new test signals can be both smaller and more effective than test signals computed by other means. Two computational examples are given to illustrate both computational issues and differences between different types of piecewise constant signals.

This paper addresses dynamic positioning of surface vessels moored to the seabed via a spread mooring system, referred to as position mooring. In normal weather conditions, the mooring system constrains the vessel and the controller applies thruster force for motion damping and heading control, only. When environmental loads due to wind, waves, and current increase, thruster assistance is required also for positioning in order to avoid damage to the mooring lines. While traditional position mooring systems apply thruster force based on constraining the vessel to lie within a predefined geographical region, the controller designed in this paper instead employs structural reliability measures for the mooring lines to restrict movement. These structural reliability measures become an intrinsic part of the controller, enabling it to automatically adjust the admissible region for the vessel in the presence of changing winds, currents, and waves.

This paper considers the combination of flatness-based motion planning and feedforward control with output feedback to achieve robust tracking of prescribed trajectories for the tip displacement of a multi-layered piezoelectric cantilever beam. Thereby, the flatness property of the distributed-parameter beam model is exploited to derive the infinite-dimensional tracking error system, which serves as the basis for the design of the output error feedback control. The stability of the resulting closed-loop system involving the infinite-dimensional beam model is proven in an input/output sense by utilizing a Nyquist-type stability criterion. Experimental results illustrate the high tracking performance in view of exogenous disturbances. The presented approach provides a systematic extension of the two-degrees-of-freedom control concept to distributed-parameter systems. †This paper is dedicated to Prof. Michel Fliess on the occasion of his 60th birthday.

In this paper we present an output feedback controller for underwater vehicles. The main design objective behind the employed strategy is to reduce the destabilizing effect of the Coriolis and centripetal forces and moments. These forces and moments represent a significant challenge for automatic control when the forward speed is sufficiently high. However, by explicitly utilizing an estimation of the current velocity in the observer, this paper shows that a high degree of robustness related to current disturbance is achieved. The system, with this output feedback controller, is proved to be globally uniformly asymptotically stable on the state space which it is defined. Simulations demonstrate the performance of the proposed output feedback controller.

This paper proposes an algorithm for autonomous strategic mission planning of missions where multiple unhabitated underwater vehicles (UUVs) cooperate in order to solve one or more mission tasks. Missions of this type include multi-agent reconnaissance missions and multi-agent mine sweeping missions. The mission planning problem is posed as a receding horizon mixed–integer constrained quadratic optimal control problem. This problem is subsequently partitioned into smaller subproblems and solved in a parallel and decentralized manner using a distributed Nash-based game approach. The paper presents the development of the proposed algorithm and discusses its properties. An application example is used to further demonstrate the main characteristics of the proposed method.

A second-order terminal sliding mode controller for uncertain multivariable systems is proposed in this paper. The controller adopts the hierarchical control structure. The paper derives the state transform matrices which are used to transform a multivariable linear system to the block controllable form consisting of two subsystems, an input-output subsystem and a stable internal dynamic subsystem. The proposed controller utilizes a non-singular terminal sliding mode manifold for the input-output subsystem to realize fast convergence and better tracking precision. Meanwhile, a chattering-free second-order terminal sliding mode control law is presented. The stability of uncertain multivariable systems can be realized using the proposed controller. A derivative estimator is utilized in the paper to estimate the derivatives of the sliding mode functions for the controller. The simulation results are presented to validate the design method.

In this paper we solve a decentralized nonlinear control problem where actuator valves and flow rate sensors are collocated in individual branches and do not exchange information. This is in contrast to our previous paper where a centralized controller required measurements from all the branches of the network. We solve both regulation (constant references) and tracking (time varying reference signals) problems. To eliminate conservativeness in choosing the gains of the controllers, we employ adaptation. We illustrate the results with an example reminiscent of a blood flow network.

This paper presents a new analysis tool for predicting the closed-loop performance of a robust constrained Model Predictive Control (MPC) scheme. Currently, performance is typically evaluated by numerical simulation, leading to extensive computation when investigating the eect of controller parameters, such as horizon length, cost weightings, and constraint settings. The method in this paper avoids this computational burden, enabling a rapid study of the trades between the design parameters and performance. Previous work developed an MPC scheme employing constraint tightening to achieve robust feasibility and constraint satisfaction despite the action of an unknown but bounded disturbance. This paper shows that the expected performance of that scheme can be predicted using a combination of the gains of two linear systems, the optimal control for the unconstrained system, and a candidate policy used in performing the constraint tightening. The method also accounts for possible mismatch between the predicted level of disturbance and the actual level encountered. The predictions are compared with simulation results for several examples.

The paper presents a cascade generalized predictive controller. The cascade control task is performed by one predictive controller and the cascade feature is incorporated in a special predictor. Simulation results are presented comparing the performances of the proposed control algorithm to traditional cascade loops including two PI or two GPC controllers. The paper investigates the effects of noise filter on the robustness of the control loops in the cascade control structure. It shows, that with the proposed predictor it is possible to adjust independently the robustness of the inner and outer loops, meanwhile in the traditional cascade loop there are cross effects in this sense. Finally a real time application of the proposed algorithm is presented: the cascade GPC was tested in the oxygen control loop of an experimental fluidized bed boiler.

In this paper, a new framework of a two loop disturbance rejection control and its design methodology are proposed. The framework consists of a robust internal-loop compensator (RIC) to eliminate disturbances and an external-loop controller to achieve nominal control performance. As the main contribution of this paper, we define the design problem of the RIC as a regulation control problem, then show that this new definition with the RIC structure provides more design flexibility and less implementation constraints, which allows us to design the RIC aggressively against a specific disturbance. This is verified through a comparative structural analysis with a disturbance observer (DOB) and an adaptive robust control (ARC). Two design examples of the RIC are given, along with practical issues that should be considered in the design procedure. The proposed framework is demonstrated by simulations and experiments.

This paper exploits design patterns employed in coordinating autonomous transport vehicles in order to ease the burden in verifying cooperating hybrid systems. The presented verification methodology is equally applicable for avionics applications (such as the traffic alert and collision avoidance system (TCAS)), train applications (such as the European train control system (ETCS)), or automotive applications (such as platooning). We present a verification rule explicating the essence of employed design patterns, guaranteeing global safety properties of the kind “a collision will never occur”, and whose premises can either be established by off-line analysis of the worst-case behaviour of the involved traffic agents, or by purely local proofs, involving only a single traffic agent. A companion paper will show how such local proof obligations can be discharged automatically.