Robust Tracking Control for Self-balancing Mobile Robots Using Disturbance Observer

In this paper,a robust tracking control scheme based on nonlinear disturbance observer is developed for the self-balancing mobile robot with external unknown disturbances.A desired velocity control law is firstly designed using the Lyapunov analysis method and the arctan function.To improve the tracking control performance,a nonlinear disturbance observer is developed to estimate the unknown disturbance of the self-balancing mobile robot.Using the output of the designed disturbance observer,the robust tracking control scheme is presented employing the sliding mode method for the selfbalancing mobile robot.Numerical simulation results further demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed robust tracking control scheme for the self-balancing mobile robot subject to external unknown disturbances.

Book Announcement of L. Celentano, Robust Tracking Controllers Design with Generic References for Continuous and Discrete Uncertain Linear SISO Systems, LAP LAMBERT Academic Publishing, 2012

In this book new results on controller design techniques for the tracking of generic reference inputs are presented. They allow the design of a controller for an uncertain process, either continuous or discrete-time, without zeros, and with measurable state. The controller guarantees that the control system is Type 1 and has the desired constant gain and poles or that the control system tracks, with a specified maximum error and with a specified maximum time constant, a generic reference with bounded derivative (variation in the discrete-time case), also in the presence of a generic disturbance with bounded derivative (variation). In addition, it is considered the case in which the reference is known a priori. The utility and the efficiency of the proposed methods are illustrated with attractive and significant examples of motion control and temperature control. This book is useful for the design of control systems, especially for manufacturing systems, that are versatile, fast, precise and robust.

Adaptive Robust Control with Leakage-Type Control Law for Trajectory Tracking of Exoskeleton Robots

This paper investigates the trajectory following problem of exoskeleton robots with numerous constraints. However, as a typical nonlinear system with variability and parameter uncertainty, it is difficult to accurately achieve the trajectory tracking control for exoskeletons. In this paper, we present a robust control of trajectory tracking control based on servo constraints. Firstly, we consider the uncertainties (e.g., modelling errors, initial condition deviations, structural vibrations, and other unknown external disturbances) in the exoskeleton system, which are time-varying and bounded. Secondly, we establish the dynamic model and formulate a close-loop connection between the dynamic model and the real world. Then, the trajectory tracking issue is regarded as a servo constraint problem, and an adaptive robust control with leakage-type adaptive law is proposed with the guaranteed Lyapunov stability. Finally, we conduct numerical simulations to verify the performance of the proposed controller.

Robust Fuzzy Tracking Control for Nonlinear Networked Control Systems with Integral Quadratic Constraints

This paper investigates the robust tracking control problcm for a class of nonlinear networked control systems （NCSs） using the Takagi-Sugeno （T-S） fuzzy model approach. Based on a time-varying delay system transformed from the NCSs, an augmented Lyapunov function containing more useful information is constructed. A less conservative sufficient condition is established such that the closed-loop systems stability and time-domain integral quadratic constraints （IQCs） are satisfied while both time-varying network- induced delays and packet losses are taken into account. The fuzzy tracking controllers design scheme is derived in terms of linear matrix inequalities （LMIs） and parallel distributed compensation （PDC）. Furthermore, robust stabilization criterion for nonlinear NCSs is given as an extension of the tracking control result. Finally, numerical simulations are provided to illustrate the effectiveness and merits of the proposed method.

Double-loop robust tracking control for micro machine tools

This paper addresses double-loop robust tracking controller design of the miniaturized linear motor drive precision stage with mass and damping ratio uncertainties. As an inner-loop, a disturbance observer （DOB） is employed to suppress exogenous low frequency disturbances such as friction and cutting force. To further eliminate the residual disturbance and to guarantee the robust tracking to the reference input, μ-synthesis outer-loop controller is designed. For eliminating the steady state error, a technique is proposed to design the μ-synthesis outer-loop controller with an integrator. A guideline to select the bandwidth of the Q-filter in the DOB is provided. Simulations using a model of a prototype micro-milling machine indicate that the proposed outer-loop synthesis scheme is superior to the H∞ suboptimal control in disturbance rejection performance and steady state tracking performance. Furthermore, it is shown experimentally that the proposed double-loop robust tracking controller improves the tracking performance of the stage by 29.6% over PID control with a DOB inner-loop.

Neural Network Based Robust Controller for Trajectory Tracking of Underwater Vehicles

A robust neural network controller （NNC） is presented for tracking control of underwater vehicles with uncertainties. The controller is obtained by using backstepping technique and Lyapunov function design in combination with neural network identification. Modeling errors and environmental disturbances are considered in the mathematical model. A twolayer neural network is introduced to compensate the modeling errors, while H∞ control strategy is used to achieve the L2-gain performance. The uniformly ultimately bounded （UUB） stabilities of tracking errors and NN weights are guaran- teed through the proposed controller. An on-line NN weights tuning algorithm is also propesed. Good performances of the tracking control system are illustrated bv the results of numerical simulations.

Robust Controller Design for Satellite Attitude Tracking System

The attitude tracking control problem for a satellite with parameter uncertainties and external disturbances is considered in this paper. For this class of multi-input multi-output uncertain nonlinear systems, a design method of robust output tracking controllers is proposed based on the upper-bounds of the uncertainties. Using the input/output feedback linearization approach and Lyapunov method, a control law is designed, which guarantees that the system output exponentially tracks the given desired output. The proposed controller is easy to compute and complement. Simulation results show that, in the closed-loop system, precise attitude control is accomplished in spite of the uncertainties in the system.

Fuzzy robust path tracking strategy of an active pelagic trawl system with coordinated ship and winch regulation

A fuzzy robust path tracking strategy of an active pelagic trawl system with ship and winch regulation is proposed.First,nonlinear mathematic model of the pelagic trawl system was derived using Lagrange equation and further simplified as a low order model for the convenience of controller design.Then,an active path tracking strategy of pelagic trawl system was investigated to improve the catching efficiency of the target fish near the sea bottom.By means of the active tracking control,the pelagic trawl net can be positioned dynamically to follow a specified trajectory via the coordinated winch and ship regulation.In addition,considering the system nonlinearities,modeling uncertainties and the unknown exogenous disturbance of the trawl system model,a nonlinear robust H2 /H∞ controller based on Takagi-Sugeno(T-S) fuzzy model was presented,and the simulation comparison with linear robust H2 /H∞ controller and PID method was conducted for the validation of the nonlinear fuzzy robust controller.The nonlinear simulation results show that the average tracking error is 0.4 m for the fuzzy robust H2 /H∞ control and 125.8 m for the vertical and horizontal displacement,respectively,which is much smaller than linear H2 /H∞ controller and the PID controller.The investigation results illustrate that the fuzzy robust controller is effective for the active path tracking control of the pelagic trawl system.

Robust Spectral Estimation of Track Irregularity

Because the existing spectral estimation methods for railway track irregularity analysis are very sensitive to outliers, a robust spectral estimation method is presented to process track irregularity signals. The proposed robust method is verified using 100 groups of clean/contaminated data reflecting he vertical profile irregularity taken from Bejing-Guangzhou railway with a sampling frequency of 33 data every ~10 m, and compared with the Auto Regressive (AR) model. The experimental results show that the proposed robust estimation is resistible to noise and insensitive to outliers, and is superior to the AR model in terms of efficiency, stability and reliability.

An Adaptive Padding Correlation Filter With Group Feature Fusion for Robust Visual Tracking

In recent visual tracking research,correlation filter(CF)based trackers become popular because of their high speed and considerable accuracy.Previous methods mainly work on the extension of features and the solution of the boundary effect to learn a better correlation filter.However,the related studies are insufficient.By exploring the potential of trackers in these two aspects,a novel adaptive padding correlation filter(APCF)with feature group fusion is proposed for robust visual tracking in this paper based on the popular context-aware tracking framework.In the tracker,three feature groups are fused by use of the weighted sum of the normalized response maps,to alleviate the risk of drift caused by the extreme change of single feature.Moreover,to improve the adaptive ability of padding for the filter training of different object shapes,the best padding is selected from the preset pool according to tracking precision over the whole video,where tracking precision is predicted according to the prediction model trained by use of the sequence features of the first several frames.The sequence features include three traditional features and eight newly constructed features.Extensive experiments demonstrate that the proposed tracker is superior to most state-of-the-art correlation filter based trackers and has a stable improvement compared to the basic trackers.

Robust adaptive tracking control of robotic systems with uncertainties

To deal with the uncertainty factors of robotic systems, a robust adaptive tracking controller is proposed. The knowledge of the uncertainty factors is assumed to be unidentified; the proposed controller can guarantee robustness to parametric and dynamics uncertainties and can also reject any bounded, immeasurable disturbances entering the system. The stability of the proposed controller is proven by the Lyapunov method. The proposed controller can easily be implemented and the stability of the closed system can be ensured; the tracking error and adaptation parameter error are uniformly ultimately bounded （UUB）. Finally, some simulation examples are utilized to illustrate the control performance.

Robust attitude control for rapid multi-target tracking in spacecraft formation flying

A robust attitude tracking control scheme for spacecraft formation flying is presented. The leader spacecraft with a rapid mobile antenna and a camera is modeled. While the camera is tracking the ground target, the antenna is tracking the follower spacecraft. By an angular velocity constraint and an angular constraint, two methods are proposed to compute the reference attitude profiles of the camera and antenna, respectively. To simplify the control design problem, this paper first derives the desired inverse system （DIS）, which can convert the attitude tracking problem of 3D space into the regulator problem. Based on DIS and sliding mode control （SMC）, a robust attitude tracking controller is developed in the presence of mass parameter uncertainties and external disturbance. By Lyapunov stability theory, the closed loop system stability can be achieved. The numerical simulations show that the proposed robust control scheme exhibits significant advantages for the multi-target attitude tracking of a two-spacecraft formation.

Robust visual tracking for manipulators withunknown intrinsic and extrinsic parameters

This paper addresses the robust visual tracking of multi-feature points for a 3D manipulator with unknown intrinsic and extrinsic parameters of the vision system. This class of control systems are highly nonlinear control systems characterized as time-varying and strong coupling in states and unknown parameters. It is first pointed out that not only is the Jacobian image matrix nonsingular, but also its minimum singular value has a positive limit. This provides the foundation of kinematics and dynamics control of manipulators with visual feedback. Second, the Euler angle expressed rotation transformation is employed to estimate a subspace of the parameter space of the vision system. Based on the two results above, and arbitrarily chosen parameters in this subspace, the tracking controllers are proposed so that the image errors can be made as small as desired so long as the control gain is allowed to be large. The controller does not use visual velocity to achieve high and robust performance with low sampling rate of the vision system. The obtained results are proved by Lyapunov direct method. Experiments are included to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed controller.

Robust parametric approach for tracking control of an air-breathing hypersonic cruise vehicle

To realize the stabilization and the tracking of flight control for an air-breathing hypersonic cruise vehicle, the linearization of the longitudinal model under trimmed cruise condition is processed firstly. Furthermore, the flight control problem is formulated as a robust model tracking control problem. And then, based on the robust parametric approach, eigenstructure assignment and reference model tracking theory, a parametric optimization method for robust controller design is presented. The simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

Robust Optimal Output Tracking Control of A Midwater Trawl System Based on T-S Fuzzy Nonlinear Model

A robust optimal output tracking control method for a midwater trawl system is investigated based on T-S fuzzy nonlinear model. A simplified nonlinear mathematical model is first employed to represent a midwater trawl system, and then a T-S fuzzy model is adopted to approximate the nonlinear system. Since the strong nonlinearities and the external disturbance of the trawling system, a mixed H2/H∞ fuzzy output tracking control strategy via T-S fuzzy system is proposed to regulate the trawl depth to follow a desired trajectory. The trawl depth can be regulated by adjusting the winch velocity automatically and the tracking error can be minimized according to the robust optimal criterion. In order to validate the proposed control method, a computer simulation is conducted. The simulation results indicate that the proposed fuzzy robust optimal controller make the trawl net rapidly follow the desired trajectory under the model uncertainties and the extemal disturbance caused by wave and current.

Quantitative feedback theory and zero phase error tracking control combined robust control for radar truck leveling simulator

Radar leveling system is the key equipment for improving the radar mobility and survival capability. A combined quantitative feedback theory (QFT) controller is designed for the radar truck leveling simulator in this paper, which suffers from strong nonlinearities and system parameter uncertainties. QFT can reduce the plant uncertainties and stabilize the system, but it fails to obtain high-precision tracking. This drawback can be solved by a robust QFT control scheme based on zero phase error tracking control (ZPETC) compensation. The combined controller not only possesses high robustness, but greatly improves the system performance. To verify the effiectiveness and the potential of the proposed controller, a series of experiments have been carried out. Experimental results have demonstrated its robustness against a large range of parameters variation and high tracking precision performance, as well as its capability of restraining the load coupling among channels. The combined QFT controller can drive the radar truck leveling platform accurately, quickly and stably.

Design of Robust-Adaptive Controller of Extended Range Guided Munition

Extended range guided munition (ERGM) is a complicated multi-input and multi-output control system. It is very difficult for general control method to meet both the designing stability and its dynamical performance, for the parameters being uncertain in the ERGM model. Adaptive controller and robust tracking controllers are presented respectively in this paper. These two approaches are synthesized in order to design an improved and applied performance of ERGM controller. Computer simulation technology is used to validate it, and the result shows the design is reasonable and applied.

Vehicle Active Steering Control Research Based on Two-DOF Robust Internal Model Control

Because of vehicle＇s external disturbances and model uncertainties,robust control algorithms have obtained popularity in vehicle stability control.The robust control usually gives up performance in order to guarantee the robustness of the control algorithm,therefore an improved robust internal model control（IMC） algorithm blending model tracking and internal model control is put forward for active steering system in order to reach high performance of yaw rate tracking with certain robustness.The proposed algorithm inherits the good model tracking ability of the IMC control and guarantees robustness to model uncertainties.In order to separate the design process of model tracking from the robustness design process,the improved 2 degree of freedom（DOF） robust internal model controller structure is given from the standard Youla parameterization.Simulations of double lane change maneuver and those of crosswind disturbances are conducted for evaluating the robust control algorithm,on the basis of a nonlinear vehicle simulation model with a magic tyre model.Results show that the established 2-DOF robust IMC method has better model tracking ability and a guaranteed level of robustness and robust performance,which can enhance the vehicle stability and handling,regardless of variations of the vehicle model parameters and the external crosswind interferences.Contradiction between performance and robustness of active steering control algorithm is solved and higher control performance with certain robustness to model uncertainties is obtained.

Stabilization and trajectory tracking of autonomous airship's planar motion

The stabilization and trajectory tracking problems of autonomous airship＇s planar motion are studied. By defining novel configuration error and velocity error, the dynamics of error systems are derived. By applying Lyapunov stability method, the state feedback control laws are designed and the close-loop error systems are proved to be uniformly asymptotically stable by Matrosov theorem. In particular, the controller does not need knowledge on system parameters in the case of set-point stabilization, which makes the controller robust with respect to parameter uncertainty. Numerical simulations illustrate the effectiveness of the controller designed.