Design of a Robust Optimal Decentralized PI Controller Based on Nonlinear Constraint Optimization For Level Regulation: An Experimental Study

This paper presents the development of a new robust optimal decentralized PI controller based on nonlinear optimization for liquid level control in a coupled tank system. The proposed controller maximizes the closed-loop bandwidth for specified gain and phase margins, with constraints on the overshoot ratio to achieve both closed-loop performance and robustness. In the proposed work, a frequency response fitting model reduction technique is initially employed to obtain a first order plus dead time(FOPDT) model of each higher order subsystem. Furthermore, based on the reduced order model, a proposed controller is designed. The stability and performance of the proposed controller are verified by considering multiplicative input and output uncertainties. The performance of the proposed optimal robust decentralized control scheme has been compared with that of a decentralized PI controller. The proposed controller is implemented in real-time on a coupled tank system. From the obtained results,it is shown that the proposed optimal decentralized PI controller exhibits superior control performance to maintain the desired level, for both the nominal as well as the perturbed case as compared to a decentralized PI controller.

基于Statistical Process Control风险等级判定及神经网络模型构建珠海市传染病指数

目的建立珠海市传染病指数预报模型,为传染病风险预测预报提供思路。方法利用统计过程控制(SPC)的控制下限、中线和控制上限划分全市2014—2017年以周次为时间计量单位的流感样病例比例、手足口病及其他感染性腹泻发病率的风险等级(布雷图指数采用5、10、20判定)。运用长短时记忆神经网络模型(LSTM)和自回归移动平均模型(ARIMA)对2018年15~19周数据进行预测。计算传染病指数并将预测值与实际值对比进而评估预测一致性。结果珠海市手足口病发病率LSTM模型中,测试集MSE为9.0441,RMSE为3.0073,训练集MSE为1.1812,RMSE为1.0868。其余模型在训练集和测试集均表现良好,没有出现过拟合现象。风险指数等级预测与实际值对比,预测一致率为96.0%。结论利用SPC划分风险等级,运用LSTM等构建传染病指数预测模型可行。

Parallel Control for Continuous-Time Linear Systems:A Case Study

In this paper,a new parallel controller is developed for continuous-time linear systems.The main contribution of the method is to establish a new parallel control law,where both state and control are considered as the input.The structure of the parallel control is provided,and the relationship between the parallel control and traditional feedback controls is presented.Considering the situations that the systems are controllable and incompletely controllable,the properties of the parallel control law are analyzed.The parallel controller design algorithms are given under the conditions that the systems are controllable and incompletely controllable.Finally,numerical simulations are carried out to demonstrate the effectiveness and applicability of the present method.Index Terms-Continuous-time linear systems,digital twin,parallel controller,parallel intelligence,parallel systems.

Networked Control Systems:A Survey of Trends and Techniques

Networked control systems are spatially distributed systems in which the communication between sensors, actuators,and controllers occurs through a shared band-limited digital communication network. Several advantages of the network architectures include reduced system wiring, plug and play devices,increased system agility, and ease of system diagnosis and maintenance. Consequently, networked control is the current trend for industrial automation and has ever-increasing applications in a wide range of areas, such as smart grids, manufacturing systems,process control, automobiles, automated highway systems, and unmanned aerial vehicles. The modelling, analysis, and control of networked control systems have received considerable attention in the last two decades. The ‘control over networks’ is one of the key research directions for networked control systems. This paper aims at presenting a survey of trends and techniques in networked control systems from the perspective of ‘control over networks’, providing a snapshot of five control issues: sampled-data control, quantization control, networked control, event-triggered control, and security control. Some challenging issues are suggested to direct the future research.

Position Control of a Flexible Manipulator Using a New Nonlinear Self-Tuning PID Controller

In this paper, a new nonlinear self-tuning PID controller(NSPIDC) is proposed to control the joint position and link deflection of a flexible-link manipulator(FLM) while it is subjected to carry different payloads. Since, payload is a critical parameter of the FLM whose variation greatly influences the controller performance. The proposed controller guarantees stability under change in payload by attenuating the non-modeled higher order dynamics using a new nonlinear autoregressive moving average with exogenous-input(NARMAX) model of the FLM. The parameters of the FLM are identified on-line using recursive least square(RLS) algorithm and using minimum variance control(MVC) laws the control parameters are updated in real-time. This proposed NSPID controller has been implemented in real-time on an experimental set-up. The joint tracking and link deflection performances of the proposed adaptive controller are compared with that of a popular direct adaptive controller(DAC). From the obtained results, it is confirmed that the proposed controller exhibits improved performance over the DAC both in terms of accurate position tracking and quick damping of link deflections when subjected to variable payloads.

Guidance Control for Parallel Parking Tasks

Parking into small berths remains difficult for unskilled drivers. Researchers had proposed different automatic parking systems to solve this problem. The first kind of strategies(called parking trajectory planning) designs a detailed reference trajectory that links the start and ending points of a special parking task and let the vehicle track this reference trajectory so as to park into the berth. The second kind of strategies(called guidance control) just characterizes several regimes of driving actions as well as the important switching points in certain rule style and let the vehicle follows the pre-selected series of actions so as to park into the berth. Parking guidance control is simpler than parking trajectory planning. However, no studies thoroughly validated parking guidance control before. In this paper, a new automatic parking method is presented, which could characterize the desired control actions directly. Then the feasibility is examined carefully. Tests show that a simple parking guidance control strategy can work in most parallel parking tasks, if the available parking berth is not too small. This finding helps to build more concise automatic parking systems that can efficiently guide human drivers.

Self-triggered Consensus Control for Linear Multi-agent Systems With Input Saturation

In this paper, we study the consensus problem for a class of linear multi-agent systems(MASs) with consideration of input saturation under the self-triggered mechanism. In the context of discrete-time systems, a self-triggered strategy is developed to determine the time interval between the adjacent triggers. The triggering condition is designed by using the current sampled consensus error. Furthermore, the consensus control protocol is designed by means of a state feedback approach. It is shown that the considered multi-agent systems can reach consensus with the presented algorithm. Some sufficient conditions are proposed in the form of linear matrix inequalities(LMIs) to show the positively invariant property of the domain of attraction(DOA). Moreover, some sufficient conditions of controller synthesis are provided to enlarge the volume of the DOA and obtain the control gain matrix. A numerical example is simulated to demonstrate the effectiveness of the theoretical analysis results.

Event-Triggered Sliding Mode Control for Trajectory Tracking of Nonlinear Systems

In this paper, an event-triggered sliding mode control approach for trajectory tracking problem of nonlinear input affine system with disturbance has been proposed. A second order robotic manipulator system has been modeled into a general nonlinear input affine system. Initially, the global asymptotic stability is ensured with conventional periodic sampling approach for reference trajectory tracking. Then the proposed approach of event-triggered sliding mode control is discussed which guarantees semi-global uniform ultimate boundedness. The proposed control approach guarantees non-accumulation of control updates ensuring lower bounds on inter-event triggering instants avoiding Zeno behavior in presence of the disturbance. The system shows better performance in terms of reduced control updates, ensures system stability which further guarantees optimization of resource usage and cost. The simulation results are provided for validation of proposed methodology for tracking problem by a robotic manipulator. The number of aperiodic control updates is found to be approximately 44% and 61% in the presence of constant and time-varying disturbances respectively.

Type-2 Fuzzy Control for Driving State and Behavioral Decisions of Unmanned Vehicle

In this paper, interval type-2 fuzzy sets, fuzzy comprehensive evaluation and the fuzzy control rules are synthesized to realize the control of unmanned vehicle in driving state and behavioral decisions. Compared to the type-1 fuzzy set, type-2 fuzzy sets have more advantages in handling the model based on uncertainties, linguistic information because the membership functions are fuzzy sets. Different membership functions are established for each factor when the unmanned vehicle is driving at different speed intervals. In addition, a new evaluation method is developed to analyze unmanned vehicle’s driving state. Finally, a set of dynamic fuzzy rules are sorted out, which can be applied to the unmanned vehicle’s behavioral decision-making and provide a new idea to related research.

Suppression of Chaotic Behaviors in a Complex Biological System by Disturbance Observer-based Derivative-Integral Terminal Sliding Mode

Coronary artery systems are a kind of complex biological systems. Their chaotic phenomena can lead to serious health problems and illness development. From the perspective of engineering, this paper investigates the chaos suppression problem. At first, nonlinear dynamics of coronary artery systems are presented. To suppress the chaotic phenomena, the method of derivative-integral terminal sliding mode control is adopted. Since coronary artery systems suffer from uncertainties, the technique of disturbance observer is taken into consideration. The stability of such a control system that integrates the derivative-integral terminal sliding mode controller and the disturbance observer is proven in the sense of Lyapunov. To verify the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed strategy, simulation results are illustrated in comparison with a benchmark.

A New Robust Adaptive Neural Network Backstepping Control for Single Machine Infinite Power System With TCSC

For a single machine infinite power system with thyristor controlled series compensation(TCSC) device, which is affected by system model uncertainties, nonlinear time-delays and external unknown disturbances, we present a robust adaptive backstepping control scheme based on the radial basis function neural network(RBFNN). The RBFNN is introduced to approximate the complex nonlinear function involving uncertainties and external unknown disturbances, and meanwhile a new robust term is constructed to further estimate the system residual error,which removes the requirement of knowing the upper bound of the disturbances and uncertainty terms. The stability analysis of the power system is presented based on the Lyapunov function,which can guarantee the uniform ultimate boundedness(UUB) of all parameters and states of the whole closed-loop system. A comparison is made between the RBFNN-based robust adaptive control and the general backstepping control in the simulation part to verify the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme.

Multi-Variable Flocking Control for Multi-Agent Systems via a Received Signal Strength Indicator

A novel flocking control approach is proposed for multi-agent systems by integrating the variables of velocities, motion directions, and positions of agents. A received signal strength indicator （RSSI） is applied as a variable to estimate the inter-distance between agents. A key parameter that contains the local information of agents is defined, and a multi-variable controller is proposed based on the parameter. For the position control of agents, the RSSI is introduced to substitute the distance as a control variable in the systems. The advantages of RSSI include that the relative distance between every two agents can be adjusted through the communication quality under different environments, and it can shun the shortage of the limit of sensors. Simulation studies demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control approach.

Access Control Mechanism for Blog Posts with Fine- Grained Ability Using Simple Operations

Access control enables the owners to assign different users different permissions to see different views. The current blog system does not support fine-grained authorization. That is, the bloggers disallow to just assign partial contents of the blog posts （i.e., a paragraph or several paragraphs） to readers. The management cost is no doubt to be significantly increased while handling the authorizations on the huge amount of blog articles. In this paper, we propose a scheme for supporting a fine-grained access control mechanism on blog articles. The advantage is that bloggers are able to authorize partial contents of blog posts to different users or groups of users.

Correcting Image Distortion for Adaptive Cruise Control

One of the main drivers for intelligent transportation systems is safety. Adaptive cruise control, as a common solution for traffic safety, lias extended from radars to cameras. Due to high mobility of vehicles and unevenness of roads, the picture quality of cameras has been great challenges for camera-based adaptive cruise control. In this paper, an image distortion correction algorithm is addressed. Our method is based on optical flow technology which is normally applied in motion estimation and video compression research. We are the first to attempt to adapt it in image distortion correction. Two optical flow approaches, the Lucas-Kanade method and the Horn-Schunck method, are selected and compared. The procedure of image distortion correction using the optical flow method has been tested by both synthetic test images and camera images. The experimental results show that the Lucas-Kanade method is more suitable in the correction of image distortion.

Research on On-Line Coordinated Control Strategy to Improve the Voltage Vulnerability after Disturbance

The on-line coordinated control strategy among multi-voltage controls is important to keep voltage security in post-fault systems. Based on the wide area measuring information, the energy function, which can qualify the impacts of the different control actions on voltage of different nodes, is proposed. And then, considering the impacts of different control actions on the node voltage being treated as a weight matrix, the energy margin is used as the objective function and the reactive power margin is innovatively used as the constraint to regulate the control actions globally according to the weight values. At last, the objective functions are solved to get the optimal global coordinated control strategies. The proposed method is identified in an IEEE-30 Bus system and the simulation results show that it effectively improves the voltage stability.

Robust Control of a Bevel-Tip Needle for Medical Interventional Procedures

In minimally invasive surgery, one of the main objectives is to ensure safety and target reaching accuracy during needle steering inside the target organ. In this research work, the needle steering approach is determined using a robust control algorithm namely the integral sliding mode control(ISMC) strategy to eliminate the chattering problem associated with the general clinical scenario. In general, the discontinuity component of feedback control input is not appropriate for the needle steering methodology due to the practical limitations of the driving actuators. Thus in ISMC, we have incorporated the replacement of the discontinuous component using a super twisting control(STC)input due to its unique features of chattering elimination and disturbance observation characteristics. In our study, the kinematic model of an asymmetric flexible bevel-tip needle in a soft-tissue phantom is used to evaluate stability analysis. A comparative study based on the analysis of chattering elimination is executed to determine the performance of the proposed control strategy in real-time needle steering with conventional sliding mode control using vision feedback through simulation and experimental results. This validates the efficacy of the proposed control strategy for clinical needle steering.

Sliding Mode Control of Coupled Tank Systems Using Conditional Integrators

For the problem of set point regulation of the liquid level in coupled tank systems, we present a continuous sliding mode control(SMC) with a "conditional integrator", which only provides integral action inside the boundary layer. For a special choice of the controller parameters, our design can be viewed as a PID controller with anti-windup and achieves robust regulation.The proposed controller recovers the transient response performance without control chattering. Both full-state feedback as well as output-feedback designs are presented in this work. Our output-feedback design uses a high-gain observer(HGO) which recovers the performance of a state-feedback design where plant parameters are assumed to be known. We consider both interacting as well as non-interacting tanks and analytical results for stability and transient performance are presented in both the cases. The proposed controller continuous SMC with conditional integrators(CSMCCI) provides superior results in terms of the performance measures as well as performance indices than ideal SMC, continuous SMC(CSMC) and continuous SMC with conventional integrator(CSMCI). Experimental results demonstrate good tracking performance in spite of unmodeled dynamics and disturbances.

Improved Bacterial Foraging Optimization Algorithm Based on Fuzzy Control Rule Base

Manual construction of a rule base for a fuzzy system is the hard and time-consuming task that requires expert knowledge.In this paper we proposed a method based on improved bacterial foraging optimization（IBFO）,which simulates the foraging behavior of “E.coli” bacterium,to tune the Gaussian membership functions parameters of an improved Takagi-Sugeno-Kang fuzzy system（C-ITSKFS） rule base.To remove the defect of the low rate of convergence and prematurity,three modifications were produced to the standard bacterial foraging optimization（BFO）.As for the low accuracy of finding out all optimal solutions with multi-method functions,the IBFO was performed.In order to demonstrate the performance of the proposed IBFO,multiple comparisons were made among the BFO,particle swarm optimization（PSO）,and IBFO by MATLAB simulation.The simulation results show that the IBFO has a superior performance.

基于多智能体系统的微电网分散协调控制策略

针对微电网在外界干扰情况下的动态稳定性问题,提出了基于多智能体系统的微电网分散协调控制策略。多智能体系统构建为两层,在下层智能体中,各分布式发电单元的分散控制设计为双环就地控制器,即由基于下垂特性的外环功率控制器和基于分数阶PID的内环电压电流控制器组成;在上层智能体中,微电网协调控制设计为H∞鲁棒控制器。构建了微电网电压稳定性评估指标,当微电网承受小干扰时,评估指标在安全域内,此时则仅依靠分散控制策略来维护系统的电压;而当有大干扰发生时,评估指标超出安全域,此时则起动协调控制,并与分散控制一起维护电压稳定。最后,仿真结果验证了控制策略的有效性。