Constrained Moving Path Following Control for UAV With Robust Control Barrier Function

This paper studies the moving path following(MPF)problem for fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicle(UAV)under output constraints and wind disturbances.The vehicle is required to converge to a reference path moving with respect to the inertial frame,while the path following error is not expected to violate the predefined boundaries.Differently from existing moving path following guidance laws,the proposed method removes complex geometric transformation by formulating the moving path following problem into a second-order time-varying control problem.A nominal moving path following guidance law is designed with disturbances and their derivatives estimated by high-order disturbance observers.To guarantee that the path following error will not exceed the prescribed bounds,a robust control barrier function is developed and incorporated into controller design with quadratic program based framework.The proposed method does not require the initial position of the UAV to be within predefined boundaries.And the safety margin concept makes error-constraint be respected even if in a noisy environment.The proposed guidance law is validated through numerical simulations of shipboard landing and hardware-in-theloop(HIL)experiments.

Adaptive Robust Control for a Class of Uncertain MIMO Non-affine Nonlinear Systems

In this paper, the adaptive robust tracking control scheme is proposed for a class of multi-input and multioutput(MIMO) non-affine systems with uncertain structure and parameters, unknown control direction and unknown external disturbance based on backstepping technique. The MIMO nonaffine system is first transformed into a time-varying system with strict feedback structure using the mean value theorem,and then the bounded time-varying parameters are estimated by adaptive algorithms with projection. To handle the possible"controller singularity" problem caused by unknown control direction, a Nussbaum function is employed, and the dynamic surface control(DSC) method is applied to solve the problem of"explosion of complexity" in backstepping control. It is proved that the proposed control scheme can guarantee that all signals of the closed-loop system are bounded through Lyapunov stability theorem and decoupled backstepping method. Simulation results are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme.

Continuous Robust Control for Series Elastic Actuator With Unknown Payload Parameters and External Disturbances

In this paper, the torque tracking control problem for a class of series elastic actuators(SEAs) in the presence of unknown payload parameters and external disturbances is investigated. The uncertainties/disturbances rejection problem for SEAs is addressed from the view of a continuous nonlinear robust control development. Specifically, based on the analysis of a nonlinear SEA, the generic dynamics of SEA systems is described and a novel nonlinear control framework for SEAs is constructed. Then a RISE(robust integral of the sign of the error)-based second-order filter is introduced to synthesize the control law. Moreover, the control performance is theoretically ensured by Lyapunov analysis. Finally, some experimental results are included to demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed control method, in terms of transient response and robustness.

Robust Controller Design of a Class of Uncertain Switched Fuzzy Systems with Delays

The robust control problem for a class of uncertain switched fuzzy systems with delays is investigated. Firstly,the model of the switched fuzzy system is presented and the parallel distributed compensation( PDC) technology is employed to design fuzzy controllers. Then, based on the convex combination method, a sufficient condition for robust stabilization in terms of linear matrix inequalities( LMIs) is obtained and a switching law is presented.Meanwhile,the Lyapunov-Krasovskii functional is taken to deal with time varying delays. Moreover,an algorithm is applied to finding a solution for a group of convex combination coefficient. Finally,a numerical example is given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Robust Controller Synthesis and Analysis in Inverter-Dominant Droop-Controlled Islanded Microgrids

This work investigates the problem of controller design for the inverters in an islanded microgrid.Robust-synthesis controllers and local droop controllers are designed to regulate the output voltages of inverters and share power among them,respectively.The designed controllers alleviate the need for additional sensors to measure the states of the system by relying only on output feedback.It is shown that the designed-synthesis controller properly damps resonant oscillations,and its performance is robust to the control-loop time delay and parameter uncertainties.The stability of a droop-controlled islanded microgrid including multiple distributed generation(DG)units is analyzed by linearizing the nonlinear power flow model around the nominal operating point and applying theorems from linear algebra.It is indicated that the droop controller stabilizes the microgrid system with dominantly inductive tie-line impedances for all values of resistive-inductive loads,while for the case of resistive-capacitive loads the stability is conditioned on an upper bound on the load susceptances.The robust performance of the designed-synthesis controller is studied analytically,compared with the similar analysis in an control(benchmark)framework,and verified by simulations for a four DG benchmark microgrid.Furthermore,the robustness of the droop controllers is analyzed by Monte Carlo simulations in the presence of local voltage fluctuations and phase differences among neighboring DGs.

Adaptive robust control for triple avoidance - striking - arrival performance of uncertain tank mechanical systems

This paper puts forward an unprecedented avoidance-striking-arrival problem aiming to address the need for tank's uncertain mechanical systems on the intelligent battlefield.The associated system uncertainties(possibly rapid)are time-varying but bounded(possibly unknown).The goal is to design a controller that enables the tank to aim at and attack the enemy tank while keeping itself(out of the enemy fire zone).The tank maintains this condition until reaching the predefined region.In this paper,an approximate constraint following control method is adopted to solve this problem,and the original constraints are creatively divided into two categories:the avoidance-tracking constraint and the striking-arrival constraint.An adaptive robust control method is proposed and consequently verified through simulation experiments.It is proved that the system fully obeys the avoidance-tracking-constraint and strictly obeys the striking-arrival constraint under the control input.Besides,the control of the tank vehicle running system and tank gun bidirectional stabilization system are unified to deal with the control signal delay caused by complex uncertainties on the battlefield.Overall,this paper reduced the delay of signal transmission in the system while solved the avoidance-striking-arrival problem.

Robust Control of Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motors

In this paper, permanent magnet synchronous motors(PMSMs) are investigated. According to the feature of PMSMs, a novel state equation of PMSMs is obtained by choosing suitable state variables. Based on the state equation, robust controllers are designed via interval matrix and PI control idea.In terms of bilinear matrix inequations, sufficient conditions for the existence of the robust controller are derived. In order to reduce the conservation and the dependence on parameter,the control inputs of PMSMs are divided into two parts, a feedforward control input and a feedback control input, and relevant sufficient conditions for the existence of the controller are obtained. Because of the suitable choice of state variables, the proposed control strategies can cope with the load uncertainty and have robustness for disturbance. Finally, simulations are carried out via Matlab/Simulink soft to verify the effectiveness of the proposed control strategies. The performance of the proposed control strategies are demonstrated by the simulation results.

Design of Robust Controller for Flexible Joint Robot with Nonlinear Friction Characteristics

A robust controller method for flexible joint robot considering the effect caused by nonlinear friction was presented.The nonlinear friction was denoted as inverse additive output uncertainty relative to the nominal model in our work,based on which the describing function was analyzed in frequency domain,and the weighting function of nonlinear friction was further calculated as well. By combining the friction uncertainty,the mixed sensitivity H∞optimization was proposed as the benchmark for controller design, which also leaded to good performance of robustness. Furthermore,unstructured perturbation to the system was analyzed so that the stability was guaranteed. Simulation results show that the proposed controller can provide excellent tracking and regulation performance.

Design of a Fixed-Order Robust Controller to Damp Inter-Area Oscillations in Power Systems

This paper presents the design of a robust fixed-order H∞ controller to damp out the inter-area oscillations and to enhance the stability of the power system. The proposed H∞ approach is based on shaping the open-loop transfer function in the Nyquist diagram through minimizing the quadratic error between the actual and the desired open loop transfer functions in the frequency domain under linear constraints that guarantee robustness and stability. The proposed approach is robust with respect to multi-model uncertainty closed-loop sensitivity functions in the Nyquist diagram through the constraints on their infinity norm. The H∞ constraints are linearized with the help of a desired open-loop transfer function. The controller is designed using the convex optimization techniques in which the difference between the open-loop transfer function and the desired one is minimized. The two-area four-machine test system is selected to evaluate the performance of the designed controller under different load conditions as well as different levels of wind penetrations.

A Switching Method for a Model Reference Robust Control with Unknown High Frequency Gain Sign

The problem of controlling a single-input-single-output plant without prior knowledge of high frequency gain sign is addressed by using the model reference robust control approach.A switching method is proposed based on a monitoring function so that after a finite number of swi- tchings the tracking error converges to zero exponentially.Furthermore,it is shown that if some initial states of the closed-loop system are zero,only one switching is needed.

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.

H∞ Robust Control System of a High-Purity Distillation Column

This paper presents the design of a robust control system for a high-purity distillation column. It is concerned with the design of a two degree-of-freedom (2DOF) product-composition controller for a high-purity distillation column. The H∞ optimization problem is set up to ensure a guaranteed level of robust stability, robust disturbance attenuation and robust reference tracking performance.

Pressure Regulation for Earth Pressure Balance Control on Shield Tunneling Machine by Using Adaptive Robust Control

Most current studies about shield tunneling machine focus on the construction safety and tunnel structure stability during the excavation. Behaviors of the machine itself are also studied, like some tracking control of the machine. Yet, few works concern about the hydraulic components, especially the pressure and flow rate regulation components. This research focuses on pressure control strategies by using proportional pressure relief valve, which is widely applied on typical shield tunneling machines. Modeling of a commercial pressure relief valve is done. The modeling centers on the main valve, because the dynamic performance is determined by the main valve. To validate such modeling, a frequency-experiment result of the pressure relief valve, whose bandwidth is about 3 Hz, is presented as comparison. The modeling and the frequency experimental result show that it is reasonable to regard the pressure relief valve as a second-order system with two low corner frequencies. PID control, dead band compensation control and adaptive robust control(ARC) are proposed and simulation results are presented. For the ARC, implements by using first order approximation and second order approximation are presented. The simulation results show that the second order approximation implement with ARC can track 4 Hz sine signal very well, and the two ARC simulation errors are within 0.2 MPa. Finally, experiment results of dead band compensation control and adaptive robust control are given. The results show that dead band compensation had about 30° phase lag and about 20% off of the amplitude attenuation. ARC is tracking with little phase lag and almost no amplitude attenuation. In this research, ARC has been tested on a pressure relief valve. It is able to improve the valve's dynamic performances greatly, and it is capable of the pressure control of shield machine excavation.

Improved Hybrid Robust Control Method for the Electromechanical Actuator in Aircrafts

In the flight process of aircrafts, their electromechanical actuators(EMA) must have the ability of enduring uncertainties caused by factors such as load disturbance, the variation of work temperature and the EMA’s nonlinearity. At present, in order to increase the EMA’s robustness on the uncertainties, the H∞ control method has been applied in aircrafts. The major problems with standard H∞ control lie in the large overshoot of step response and the high orders of the controller. For the purpose of addressing the two problems, this paper investigates several kinds of robust control strategies of the EMA. A mathematical model of the EMA is first built, and then with MATLAB software a H∞ controller and an improved hybrid robust controller composed of a reduced order H∞ controller and a lead compensator are designed. In order to make a scientific comparison of the control effects of H∞ controller, hybrid controller and classic proportion-integral-differential(PID) controller, a simulation research is made in respect of the open loop frequency response and the closed loop step response of the three controllers. For comparing the robustness of the three controllers, the load torque is entered as a disturbance and the disturbance response of error and control input are thus obtained. The experiments with the three controllers are also conducted. Through giving the EMA a command and a disturbance torque successively, the transient response and disturbing process of EMA are recorded. The simulation and experiment results show that with the help of the hybrid controller, the EMA not only guarantees good dynamic characteristics, but also has strong robustness of disturbance rejection. Therefore, the excogitated H∞ hybrid control method effectively solves the problem of large overshoot in dynamic response, and moderately meets the requirement of overcoming the uncertainties in the EMA of aircrafts.

Robust control of uncertain time delay system:a novel sliding mode control design via LMI

The sliding mode control problem (SMC) is studied for a class of uncertain delay system in the presence of both parameter uncertainties and external disturbances. A novel virtual feedback control method is presented. Based on Lyapunov theory, sufficient conditions for design of the robust sliding mode plane are derived. Sliding mode controller based on reaching law concept is developed, which is to ensure system trajectories from any initial conditions asymptotically convergent to sliding mode plane. The global asymptotically stability of the closed-loop system is guaranteed. A numerical example with simulation results is given to illustrate the effectiveness of the methodology.

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 two-layer 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 guaranteed through the proposed controller. An on-line NN weights tuning algorithm is also proposed. Good performances of the tracking control system are illustrated by the results of numerical simulations.

LMI-based robust control of uncertain discrete-time piecewise affine systems

The main contribution of this paper is to present stability synthesis results for discrete-time piecewise affine (PWA) systems with polytopic time-varying uncertainties and for discrete-time PWA systems with norm-bounded uncertainties respectively.The basic idea of the proposed approaches is to construct piecewise-quadratic (PWQ) Lyapunov functions to guarantee the stability of the closed-loop systems.The partition information of the PWA systems is taken into account and each polytopic operating region is outer approximated by an ellipsoid,then sufficient conditions for the robust stabilization are derived and expressed as a set of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs).Two examples are given to illustrate the proposed theoretical results.

Generalized Internal Model Robust Control for Active Front Steering Intervention

Because of the tire nonlinearity and vehicle's parameters'uncertainties,robust control methods based on the worst cases,such as H_∞,μsynthesis,have been widely used in active front steering control,however,in order to guarantee the stability of active front steering system(AFS)controller,the robust control is at the cost of performance so that the robust controller is a little conservative and has low performance for AFS control.In this paper,a generalized internal model robust control(GIMC)that can overcome the contradiction between performance and stability is used in the AFS control.In GIMC,the Youla parameterization is used in an improved way.And GIMC controller includes two sections:a high performance controller designed for the nominal vehicle model and a robust controller compensating the vehicle parameters'uncertainties and some external disturbances.Simulations of double lane change(DLC)maneuver and that of braking on split-μroad are conducted to compare the performance and stability of the GIMC control,the nominal performance PID controller and the H_∞controller.Simulation results show that the high nominal performance PID controller will be unstable under some extreme situations because of large vehicle's parameters variations,H_∞controller is conservative so that the performance is a little low,and only the GIMC controller overcomes the contradiction between performance and robustness,which can both ensure the stability of the AFS controller and guarantee the high performance of the AFS controller.Therefore,the GIMC method proposed for AFS can overcome some disadvantages of control methods used by current AFS system,that is,can solve the instability of PID or LQP control methods and the low performance of the standard H_∞controller.