Hierarchical Controller Synthesis Under Linear Temporal Logic Specifications Using Dynamic Quantization

Linear temporal logic(LTL)is an intuitive and expressive language to specify complex control tasks,and how to design an efficient control strategy for LTL specification is still a challenge.In this paper,we implement the dynamic quantization technique to propose a novel hierarchical control strategy for nonlinear control systems under LTL specifications.Based on the regions of interest involved in the LTL formula,an accepting path is derived first to provide a high-level solution for the controller synthesis problem.Second,we develop a dynamic quantization based approach to verify the realization of the accepting path.The realization verification results in the necessity of the controller design and a sequence of quantization regions for the controller design.Third,the techniques of dynamic quantization and abstraction-based control are combined together to establish the local-to-global control strategy.Both abstraction construction and controller design are local and dynamic,thereby resulting in the potential reduction of the computational complexity.Since each quantization region can be considered locally and individually,the proposed hierarchical mechanism is more efficient and can solve much larger problems than many existing methods.Finally,the proposed control strategy is illustrated via two examples from the path planning and tracking problems of mobile robots.

Evolutionary Decision-Making and Planning for Autonomous Driving Based on Safe and Rational Exploration and Exploitation

Decision-making and motion planning are extremely important in autonomous driving to ensure safe driving in a real-world environment.This study proposes an online evolutionary decision-making and motion planning framework for autonomous driving based on a hybrid data-and model-driven method.First,a data-driven decision-making module based on deep reinforcement learning(DRL)is developed to pursue a rational driving performance as much as possible.Then,model predictive control(MPC)is employed to execute both longitudinal and lateral motion planning tasks.Multiple constraints are defined according to the vehicle’s physical limit to meet the driving task requirements.Finally,two principles of safety and rationality for the self-evolution of autonomous driving are proposed.A motion envelope is established and embedded into a rational exploration and exploitation scheme,which filters out unreasonable experiences by masking unsafe actions so as to collect high-quality training data for the DRL agent.Experiments with a high-fidelity vehicle model and MATLAB/Simulink co-simulation environment are conducted,and the results show that the proposed online-evolution framework is able to generate safer,more rational,and more efficient driving action in a real-world environment.

Temporal and Spatial Variations in the Climate Controls of Vegetation Dynamics on the Tibetan Plateau during 1982–2011

The ecosystem of the Tibetan Plateau is highly susceptible to climate change. Currently, there is little discussion on the temporal changes in the link between climatic factors and vegetation dynamics in this region under the changing climate.By employing Normalized Difference Vegetation Index data, the Climatic Research Unit temperature and precipitation data,and the in-situ meteorological observations, we report the temporal and spatial variations in the relationships between the vegetation dynamics and climatic factors on the Plateau over the past three decades. The results show that from the early 1980s to the mid-1990s, vegetation dynamics in the central and southeastern part of the Plateau appears to show a closer relationship with precipitation prior to the growing season than that of temperature. From the mid-1990s, the temperature rise seems to be the key climatic factor correlating vegetation growth in this region. The effects of increasing temperature on vegetation are spatially variable across the Plateau: it has negative impacts on vegetation activity in the southwestern and northeastern part of the Plateau, and positive impacts in the central and southeastern Plateau. In the context of global warming, the changing climate condition(increasing precipitation and significant rising temperature) might be the potential contributor to the shift in the climatic controls on vegetation dynamics in the central and southeastern Plateau.

Is the feminization of labor harmful to agricultural production? The decision-making and production control perspective

Even today,academics continue to debate the effect of feminization of agricultural labor force on agricultural output.By considering the dimensions of participation in decision-making and production,this study divides the various agricultural production models into three types:(i)the traditional model of decisions made either jointly by men and women or by men alone while both genders participate in production,(ii)complete feminization of agricultural decision-making and the production labor force,and(iii)feminization of the agricultural production labor force only.This study investigates the effects of combining or separating decision-making and production in regard to agricultural development in the context of feminization of the agricultural labor force.Using follow-up data collected from 2004–2008 by the Ministry of Agriculture of China,we built a comprehensive panel data model to test our hypotheses.Our research shows that in comparison to traditional agricultural households and fully feminized agricultural labor forces,partially feminized production resulted in lower grain yield and technological advancement.The feminization of agricultural labor does not necessarily have a negative impact on agricultural output,especially since heavy manual labor is being increasingly replaced by agricultural machinery and outsourcing of tasks.The degree of feminization of the decision-making and production processes should be an important consideration when evaluating the purported negative effects of the feminization of agricultural labor.

Decision-Making in Driver-Automation Shared Control:A Review and Perspectives

Shared control schemes allow a human driver to work with an automated driving agent in driver-vehicle systems while retaining the driver’s abilities to control.The human driver,as an essential agent in the driver-vehicle shared control systems,should be precisely modeled regarding their cognitive processes,control strategies,and decision-making processes.The interactive strategy design between drivers and automated driving agents brings an excellent challenge for human-centric driver assistance systems due to the inherent characteristics of humans.Many open-ended questions arise,such as what proper role of human drivers should act in a shared control scheme?How to make an intelligent decision capable of balancing the benefits of agents in shared control systems?Due to the advent of these attentions and questions,it is desirable to present a survey on the decision making between human drivers and highly automated vehicles,to understand their architectures,human driver modeling,and interaction strategies under the driver-vehicle shared schemes.Finally,we give a further discussion on the key future challenges and opportunities.They are likely to shape new potential research directions.

Consensus intuitionistic fuzzy group decision-making method for aircraft cockpit display and control system evaluation

A novel group decision-making （GDM） method based on intuitionistic fuzzy sets （IFSs） is developed to evaluate the ergonomics of aircraft cockpit display and control system （ACDCS）. The GDM process with four steps is discussed. Firstly, approaches are proposed to transform four types of common judgement representations into a unified expression by the form of the IFS, and the features of unifications are analyzed. Then, the aggregation operator called the IFSs weighted averaging （IFSWA） operator is taken to synthesize decision-makers’ （DMs’） preferences by the form of the IFS. In this operator, the DM’s reliability weights factors are determined based on the distance measure between their preferences. Finally, an improved score function is used to rank alternatives and to get the best one. An illustrative example proves the proposed method is effective to valuate the ergonomics of the ACDCS.

Spatiotemporal Input Control:Leveraging Temporal Variation in Network Dynamics

The number of available control sources is a limiting factor to many network control tasks.A lack of input sources can result in compromised controllability and/or sub-optimal network performance,as noted in engineering applications such as the smart grids.The mechanism can be explained by a linear timeinvariant model,where structural controllability sets a lower bound on the number of required sources.Inspired by the ubiquity of time-varying topologies in the real world,we propose the strategy of spatiotemporal input control to overcome the source-related limit by exploiting temporal variation of the network topology.We theoretically prove that under this regime,the required number of sources can always be reduced to 2.It is further shown that the cost of control depends on two hyperparameters,the numbers of sources and intervals,in a trade-off fashion.As a demonstration,we achieve controllability over a complex network resembling the nervous system of Caenorhabditis elegans using as few as 6%of the sources predicted by a static control model.This example underlines the potential of utilizing topological variation in complex network control problems.

Temporal Preferences-Based Utility Control for Smart Homes

The residential sector contributes a large part of the energy to the global energy balance.To date,housing demand has mostly been uncontrollable and inelastic to grid conditions.Analyzing the performance of a home energy manage-ment system requires the creation of various profiles of real-world residential demand,as residential demand is complex and includes multiple factors such as occupancy,climate,user preferences,and appliance types.Average Peak Ratio(A2P)is one of the most important parameters when managing an efficient and cost-effective energy system.At the household level,the larger relative magni-tudes of certain energy devices make managing this ratio critical,albeit difficult.Various Demand Response(DR)and Demand Side Management(DSM)systems have been proposed to reduce this ratio to 1.The main ways to achieve this are economic incentives,user comfort modeling and control,or preference-based.In this study,we propose a unique opportunistic social time approach called the Time Utility Based Control Feature(TUBCF),which uses the concept of a utility function from economics to model and control consumer devices.We propose a DR model for residential customers to reduce Peak-to-Average Ratio(PAR)and improve customer satisfaction by eliminating Appliance Wait Time(WTA)during peak periods.For PAR reduction and WTA,we propose a system architecture and mathematical formulation.Our proposed model automatically schedules devices based on their temporal preferences and considers six households with different device types and operational characteristics.Simulation results show that using this strategy can reduce A2P by 80%and improve user comfort during peak hours.

Application of Fuzzy Automata Decision-Making System in Target Control

In order to perform better in target control, this paper proposed a decision-making system method based on fuzzy automata. The decision-making system first preprocessed the signal and then performed a two-level decision on the target to achieve optimal control. The system consisted of four parts: signal preprocessing, contrast decision-making, comprehensive judgment of decision-making and decision-making result. These decision algorithms in target control were given. A concrete application of this decision-making system in target control was described. Being compared with other existing methods, this paper used both global features and local features of target, and used the decision-making system of fuzzy automata for the target control. Simulation results showed that the control effect based on the decision-making system was better than that of the other existing methods. Not only it was faster, but also its correct control rate was higher to be 95.18% for the target control. This research on the control system not only developed the FA theory, but also strengthened its application scope in the field of control engineering.

Special issue on Networked sensing,decision-making and control

Networked sensing and control has attracted significant interest in recent years due to its wide applications. For example, sensor networks, especially wireless sensor networks, have found important applications in environmental monitoring, agriculture, building and industrial automation, machine condition monitoring, intelligent transportation systems, health care, surveillance, and defense. On the other hand, due to the flexibility and significant COSt-saving,

Hierarchical Coordinated Control for Power System Voltage Using Linear Temporal Logic

The paper proposed an approach to study the power system voltage coordinated control using Linear Temporal Logic (LTL). First, the hybrid Automata model for power system voltage control was given, and a hierarchical coordinated voltage control framework was described in detail. In the hierarchical control structure, the high layer is the coordinated layer for global voltage control, and the low layer is the power system controlled. Then, the paper introduced the LTL language, its specification formula and basic method for control. In the high layer, global voltage coordinated control specification was defined by LTL specification formula. In order to implement system voltage coordinated control, the LTL specification formula was transformed into hybrid Automata model by the proposed algorithms. The hybrid Automata in high layer could coordinate the different distributed voltage controller, and have constituted a closed loop global voltage control system satisfied the LTL specification formula. Finally, a simple example of power system voltage control include the OLTC controller, the switched capacitor controller and the under-voltage shedding load controller was given for simulating analysis and verification by the proposed approach for power system coordinated voltage control. The results of simulation showed that the proposed method in the paper is feasible.

Temporal Prediction of Aircraft Loss-of-Control: A Dynamic Optimization Approach

Loss of Control (LOC) is the primary factor responsible for the majority of fatal air accidents during past decade. LOC is characterized by the pilot’s inability to control the aircraft and is typically associated with unpredictable behavior, potentially leading to loss of the aircraft and life. In this work, the minimum time dynamic optimization problem to LOC is treated using Pontryagin’s Maximum Principle (PMP). The resulting two point boundary value problem is solved using stochastic shooting point methods via a differential evolution scheme (DE). The minimum time until LOC metric is computed for corresponding spatial control limits. Simulations are performed using a linearized longitudinal aircraft model to illustrate the concept.

Research Advances in Spatio-Temporal Coupling of Water and Fertilizer in Sugarcane

The coupling of water and fertilizer is the only way for high yield, efficiency, sugar on sugarcane. On sugarcane production, the spatial and temporal controlling technology of fertigation is an important direction of the sustainable and healthy development of ecological agriculture in cane area of China. This paper reviews main achievements and advances on the coupling effect of water and fertilizer on sugarcane from time and space at home or abroad in recent years, analyzes the application prospects of the temporal and spatial coupling effect of water and fertilizer on sugarcane and puts forward some problems which need further research in future.

A Temporal Multi-Tenant RBAC Model for Collaborative Cloud Services

Multi-tenant collaboration brings the challenge to access control in cloud computing environment.Based on the multi-tenant role-based access control(MT-RBAC)model,a Temporal MT-RBAC(TMT-RBAC)model for collaborative cloud services is proposed.It adds the time constraint between trusted tenants,including usable role time constraint based on both calendar and interval time.Analysis shows that the new model strengthens the presentation ability of MT-RBAC model,achieves the finer-grained access control,reduces the management costs and enhances the security of multi-tenant collaboration in cloud computing environment.

Distributed spatio-temporal generative adversarial networks

Owing to the wide range of applications in various fields,generative models have become increasingly popular.However,they do not handle spatio-temporal features well.Inspired by the recent advances in these models,this paper designs a distributed spatio-temporal generative adversarial network(STGAN-D)that,given some initial data and random noise,generates a consecutive sequence of spatio-temporal samples which have a logical relationship.This paper builds a spatio-temporal discriminator to distinguish whether the samples generated by the generator meet the requirements for time and space coherence,and builds a controller for distributed training of the network gradient updated to separate the model training and parameter updating,to improve the network training rate.The model is trained on the skeletal dataset and the traffic dataset.In contrast to traditional generative adversarial networks(GANs),the proposed STGAN-D can generate logically coherent samples with the corresponding spatial and temporal features while avoiding mode collapse.In addition,this paper shows that the proposed model can generate different styles of spatio-temporal samples given different random noise inputs,and the controller can improve the network training rate.This model will extend the potential range of applications of GANs to areas such as traffic information simulation and multiagent adversarial simulation.

Spatial-temporal heterogeneity and controlling factors of evapotranspiration in Nujiang River Basin based on Variable Infiltration Capacity(VIC)model

Land surface evapotranspiration(ET)is a critical component in the hydrological cycle but has not well been understood in data-scarce areas especially in river basins,like Nujiang River(NRB)which is characterized by large elevation gradient and different vegetation zones with complex processes of water and energy exchange.The quality of ET from optical remote sensing is constrained by cloud cover which is common in the NRB in the monsoon seasons.To understand factors controlling the spatial-temporal heterogeneity of ET in NRB,we employed the Variable Infiltration Capacity(VIC)hydrological model by parameter optimization with support of quality controlled remote sensing ET product and observed river runoff series in the river.The modeled ET has increased during 1984-2018,which might be one of the reasons for the runoff decrease but precipitation increase in the same period.ET increase and runoff decrease tended to be quicker within altitudinal band of 2000-4000 m than in other areas in NRB.We observed that ET variation in different climatic zones were controlled by different factors.ET is generally positively correlated with precipitation,temperature,and shortwave radiation but negatively with relative humidity.In the Tundra Climate(Et)zone in the upper reach of NRB,ET is controlled by precipitation,while it is controlled by shortwave radiation in the snow climate with dry winter(Dw)zone.ET increase is influenced by the increase of temperature,wind speed,and shortwave radiation in the middle and downstream of NRB with warm temperate climate,fully humid(Cf)and warm temperate climate with dry winter(Cw).

Formal Reduction of Interfaces to Large-scale Process Control Systems

A formal methodology is proposed to reduce the amount of information displayed to remote human operators at interfaces to large-scale process control plants of a certain type. The reduction proceeds in two stages. In the first stage, minimal reduced subsets of components, which give full information about the state of the whole system, are generated by determining functional dependencies between components. This is achieved by using a temporal logic proof obligation to check whether the state of all components can be inferred from the state of components in a subset in specified situations that the human operator needs to detect, with respect to a finite state machine model of the system and other human operator behavior. Generation of reduced subsets is automated with the help of a temporal logic model checker. The second stage determines the interconnections between components to be displayed in the reduced system so that the natural overall graphical structure of the system is maintained. A formal definition of an aesthetic for the required subgraph of a graph representation of the full system, containing the reduced subset of components, is given for this purpose. The methodology is demonstrated by a case study.

A novel interactive preferential evolutionary method for controller tuning in chemical processes

In response to many multi-attribute decision-making(MADM)problems involved in chemical processes such as controller tuning,which suffer human's subjective preferential nature in human–computer interactions,a novel affective computing and preferential evolutionary solution is proposed to adapt human–computer interaction mechanism.Based on the stimulating response mechanism,an improved affective computing model is introduced to quantify decision maker's preference in selections of interactive evolutionary computing.In addition,the mathematical relationship between affective space and decision maker's preferences is constructed.Subsequently,a human–computer interactive preferential evolutionary algorithm for MADM problems is proposed,which deals with attribute weights and optimal solutions based on preferential evolution metrics.To exemplify applications of the proposed methods,some test functions and,emphatically,controller tuning issues associated with a chemical process are investigated,giving satisfactory results.

On-Line Tuning Scheme for the Generalized Predictive Controller via Simulation Optimization

Predictive control has recently received much attention from researchers. However a challenging problem to be solved is how to tune the parameters of the predictive controller. So far, only few guidelines related to tuning of the parameters of predictive controllers have been provided in literature. In practice, these parameters are generally off-line determined by the designers' experience. From the point of view of process control, it is difficult to find out the optimal parameters for the control system based on a single quadratic performance index, which is used in the standard predictive control algorithm. The fuzzy decision-making function is investigated in this paper. Firstly, M control actions are achieved by unconstrained predictive control algorithm, and fuzzy goals and fuzzy constraints are then calculated and the global satisfaction degree is obtained by fuzzy inference. Moreover, the weighting coefficient λ in the cost function is tuned using simulation optimization according to the fuzzy criteria.

Information Security Evaluation of Industrial Control Systems Using Probabilistic Linguistic MCDM Method

Industrial control systems(ICSs)are widely used in various fields,and the information security problems of ICSs are increasingly serious.The existing evaluation methods fail to describe the uncertain evaluation information and group evaluation information of experts.Thus,this paper introduces the probabilistic linguistic term sets(PLTSs)to model the evaluation information of experts.Meanwhile,we propose a probabilistic linguistic multi-criteria decision-making(PL-MCDM)method to solve the information security assessment problem of ICSs.Firstly,we propose a novel subscript equivalence distance measure of PLTSs to improve the existing methods.Secondly,we use the Best Worst Method(BWM)method and Criteria Importance Through Inter-criteria Correlation(CRITIC)method to obtain the subjective weights and objective weights,which are used to derive the combined weights.Thirdly,we use the subscript equivalence distance measure method and the combined weight method to improve the probabilistic linguistic Visekriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje(PL-VIKOR)method.Finally,we apply the proposed method to solve the information security assessment problem of ICSs.When comparing with the existing methods such as the probabilistic linguistic Tomada deDecisão Iterativa Multicritério(PL-TODIM)method and probabilistic linguistic Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution(PL-TOPSIS)method,the case example shows that the proposed method can provide more reasonable ranking results.By evaluating and ranking the information security level of different ICSs,managers can identify problems in time and guide their work better.