Extraction of Basic Trends of Urban Expansion in China over Past 40 Years from Satellite Images

If urban sprawl is to be avoided in China in the next ten years, it is not only crucial to understand the overall history, current status, and future trends of urban expansion there, but also these differences, and this is presently lacking. In this study, remotely sensed images with approximately 30 m spatial resolution were used to quantitatively assess the spatial and temporal patterns of urban expansion of 60 Chinese cities(1973–2013). Urban-expansion-process curves of the cities studied were drawn using annual expansion area as an indicator. Curve similarity analysis generated four basic process modes of urban expansion in China. These included cities that: 1) peaked around 2004 and then decelerated; 2) peaked around 2010 and then decelerated; 3) showed sustained acceleration, and 4) showed continued deceleration. Four basic process modes represented cities under different levels of development stage. Geographic location was found to be the most related characteristic to urban expansion process. Regional development policies at the national level in each region also showed highly temporal consistency with fluctuation characteristics of urban expansion process. Urban characteristic such as population size and administrative level were not found to be significantly related to urban expansion-process modes. Understanding the basic process-mode categories well is extremely important for future regional-balance planning and development of macroeconomic policies.

Vector Field Based Sliding Mode Control of Curved Path Following for Miniature Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in Winds

In this paper, a curved path following control algorithm for miniature unmanned aerial vehicles（UAVs） in winds with constant speed and altitude is developed. Different to the widely considered line or orbit following, the curved path to be followed is defined in terms of the arc-length parameter, which can be straight lines, orbits, B-splines or any other curves provided that they are smooth. The proposed path following control algorithm, named by VF-SMC, is combining the vector field（VF） strategy with the sliding mode control（SMC） method. It is proven that the designed algorithm guarantees the tracking errors to be a bounded ball in the presence of winds, with the aid of the Lyapunov method and the BIBO stability. The algorithm is validated both in Matlab-based simulations and high-fidelity semi-physical simulations. In Matlab-based simulations, the proposed algorithm is verified for straight lines, orbits and B-splines to show its wide usage in different curves.The high-fidelity semi-physical simulation system is composed of actual autopilot controller, ground station and X-Plane flight simulator in-loop. In semi-physical simulations, the proposed algorithm is verified for B-spline path following under various gain parameters and wind conditions thoroughly.All experiments show the accuracy in curved path following and the excellent robustness to wind disturbances of the proposed algorithm.