Time‐varying input delay compensation for nonlinear systems with additive disturbance: An output feedback approach

This paper addresses the output feedback tracking control of a class of multiple‐input and multiple‐output nonlinear systems subject to time‐varying input delay and additive bounded disturbances. Based on the backstepping design approach, an output feedback robust controller is proposed by integrating an extended state observer and a novel robust controller, which uses a desired trajectory‐based feedforward term to achieve an improved model compensation and a robust delay compensation feedback term based on the finite integral of the past control values to compensate for the time‐varying input delay. The extended state observer can simultaneously estimate the unmeasurable system states and the additive disturbances only with the output measurement and delayed control input. The proposed controller theoretically guarantees prescribed transient performance and steady‐state tracking accuracy in spite of the presence of time‐varying input delay and additive bounded disturbances based on Lyapunov stability analysis by using a Lyapunov‐Krasovskii functional. A specific study on a 2‐link robot manipulator is performed; based on the system model and the proposed design procedure, a suitable controller is developed, and comparative simulation results are obtained to demonstrate the effectiveness of the developed control scheme.     

含有摩擦补偿的全方位移动机器人自抗扰控制

本文针对全方位移动机器人轨迹追踪中的摩擦补偿问题,提出了一种改进的非线性自抗扰控制器.首先建立了含有经典静态摩擦模型的全方位移动机器人动力学模型.其次,基于该模型设计非线性控制器和线性扩张状态观测器并给出了系统的稳定性分析.通过将模型已知项加入线性扩张状态观测器中得到摩擦力的估计值,并将估计值用于非线性控制器中摩擦补偿部分.为减小摩擦力对机器人低速运动轨迹追踪控制的影响,非线性控制器采用变增益控制器进行轨迹追踪控制.最后通过仿真结果验证本文提出控制器的有效性.     

An Active Disturbance Rejection Approach to Leader‐Follower Controlled Formation

This article describes the design of a linearizing, observer‐based, robust dynamic feedback control scheme for output reference trajectory tracking tasks in a leader‐follower non‐holonomic car formation problem. The approach is based on the cars' kinematic models. A radical simplification in the form of a global ultra‐model is proposed on the follower's exact open loop position tracking error dynamics obtained via flatness considerations. This results in a system described by an additively disturbed set of two, second order integrators with non‐linear velocity dependent control input gain matrix. The unknown additive disturbances are modeled as absolutely uniformly bounded time signals which may be locally approximated by arbitrary elements of a sufficiently high degree family of Taylor polynomials. Linear high‐gain Luenberger observers of the generalized proportional integral (GPI) type may be readily designed. These observers include the self updating internal model of the unknown disturbance input vector components in the form of generic, instantaneous, time‐polynomial models. The proposed (GPI) observers, which are the dual counterpart of GPI controllers [17], achieve a simultaneous disturbance estimation and tracking error phase variables estimation. This on‐line gathered information is used to advantage on the follower's feedback controller thus allowing for a simple, yet efficient, disturbance and control input gain cancelation effort. The results are applied to have the follower track a time‐delayed version of the actual leader's trajectory. Experimental results are presented which illustrate the robustness and viability of the proposed approach.     

A Saturating Extension of an Output Feedback Controller for Internally Damped Euler‐Lagrange Systems

In this research, a novel extension of the passivity‐based output feedback trajectory tracking controller is developed for internally damped Euler‐Lagrange systems with input saturation. Compared with the previous output feedback controllers, this new design of a combined adaptive controller‐observer system will reduce the risk of actuator saturation effectively via generalized saturation functions. Semi‐global uniform ultimate boundedness stability of the tracking errors and state estimation errors is guaranteed by Lyapunov stability analysis. An application of the proposed saturated output feedback controller is the stabilization of a nonholonomic wheeled mobile robot with saturated actuators towards desired trajectories. Simulation results are provided to illustrate the efficiency of the proposed controller in dealing with the actuator saturation.     

Global Practical Tracking for Nonlinear Systems With More Unknowns via Adaptive Output‐Feedback

This paper investigates the global practical tracking via adaptive output‐feedback for a class of uncertain nonlinear systems. Essentially different from the closely related literature, the system under investigation possesses unknown time‐varying control coefficients and a polynomial‐of‐output growth rate, and meanwhile, the system nonlinearities and the reference signal allow serious unknowns. For this, an adaptive observer is designed to reconstruct the system unmeasured states, where a new dynamic gain is introduced to compensate the serious unknowns in the system nonlinearities and the reference signal. Based on this and by backstepping technique, an adaptive output‐feedback controller is successfully designed, such that all the states of the closed‐loop system are bounded, and the tracking error will be prescribed sufficiently small after a finite time. A numerical simulation is provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.     

基于视觉图像的全向移动机器人轨迹跟踪控制研究

机器人轨迹节点跟踪比较难,导致机器人实际轨迹偏离期望轨迹,所以设计基于视觉图像的全向移动机器人轨迹跟踪控制方法;构建全向移动机器人的运动学数学模型,以此确定机器人移动轨迹数学模型;以移动轨迹数学模型为基础,按照视觉图像划分标准对全向移动机器人运动图像的分割,通过分离目标节点的方式提取运动学特征参量,完成机器人轨迹节点跟踪处理;结合节点跟踪处理结果,将运动学不等式与误差向量作为机器人轨迹跟踪控制的约束条件,利用滑模变结构搭建轨迹跟踪控制模型,实现全向移动机器人轨迹跟踪控制;对比实验结果表明,所设计的方法应用后,全向移动机器人角速度曲线、线速度曲线与期望运动轨迹曲线之间的贴合程度均超过90%,满足全向移动机器人轨迹跟踪控制要求。     

Passivity-based tracking control of an omnidirectional mobile robot using only one geometrical parameter

This paper presents an output feedback tracking control scheme for a three-wheeled omnidirectional mobile robot, based on passivity property and a modified generalized proportional integral (GPI) observer. The proposed control approach is attractive from an implementation point of view, since only one robot geometrical parameter (i.e., contact radius) is required. Firstly, a nominal dynamic model is given and the passivity property is analyzed. Then the controller is designed based on passivity property and a modified GPI observer. The controller design objective is to preserve the passivity property of the robot system in the closed-loop system, which is conceptually different from the traditional model-based control methodology. Particularly, the designed control system takes full advantage of the robot natural damping. Therefore, only considerably small or non differential feedback is needed. In addition, theoretical analysis is given to show the closed-loop stability behavior. Finally, experiments are conducted to validate the effectiveness of the proposed control system design in both tracking and robustness performance.     

An Intelligent Robust Tracking Control for a Class of Electrically Driven Mobile Robots

This paper addresses the problem of designing robust tracking control for a class of uncertain wheeled mobile robots actuated by brushed direct current motors. This class of electrically‐driven mechanical systems consists of the robot kinematics, the robot dynamics, and the wheel actuator dynamics. Via the backstepping technique, an intelligent robust tracking control scheme that integrates a kinematic controller and an adaptive neural network‐based (or fuzzy‐based) controller is developed such that all of the states and signals of the closed‐loop system are bounded and the tracking error can be made as small as possible. Two adaptive approximation systems are constructed to learn the behaviors of unknown mechanical and electrical dynamics. The effects of both the approximation errors and the unmodeled time‐varying perturbations in the input and virtual‐input weighting matrices are counteracted by suitably tuning the control gains. Consequently, the robust control scheme developed here can be employed to handle a broader class of electrically‐driven wheeled mobile robots in the presence of high‐degree time‐varying uncertainties. Finally, a simulation example is given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the developed control scheme.     

Flatness-based linear output feedback control for disturbance rejection and tracking tasks on a Chua's circuit

A linear output feedback controller is developed for trajectory tracking problems defined on a modified version of Chua's circuit. The circuit modification considers the introduction of a flat input, i.e. a suitable external control input channel guided by (a) the induction of the flatness property on a measurable output signal of the circuit and (b) the physical viability of the control input. A linear active disturbance rejection control based on a high-gain linear disturbance observer, is implemented on a laboratory prototype. We show that the state-dependent disturbance can be approximately, but arbitrarily closely, estimated through a linear high-gain observer, called a generalised proportional integral (GPI) observer, which contains a linear combination of a sufficient number of extra iterated integrals of the output estimation error. Experimental results are presented in the output reference trajectory tracking of a signal generated by an unrelated chaotic system of the Lorenz type. Laboratory experiments illustrate the proposed linear methodology for effectively controlling chaos.     

An observer-controller combination for a unicycle mobile robot

This paper considers the problem of output feedback trajectory tracking with a unicycle mobile robot system. A state-feedback controller for the non-linear error dynamics of the robot is combined with an observer that estimates the orientation error based on available trajectory information and measurement of the position coordinates. A stability analysis, derivation and implementation of the resulting controller is given and tested on an experimental mobile robot.     

Global tracking of nonlinear systems with simultaneous unknown time‐varying state and input delays

This paper presents the design of a robust control law for a class of nonlinear dynamical systems subjected to parametric uncertainty and simultaneous unknown, variable state and input delays. A novel controller is developed, which consists of a filtered tracking error and the integral of previous values of control input where the limits of integration are dependent on the known bound of the input delay. Lyapunov‐Krasovskii functionals–based stability analysis guarantees a global uniformly ultimately bounded tracking result where sufficient conditions on controller gains and maximum allowable delay are derived. The performance and robustness of the controller are evaluated by simulation on a two‐link robot manipulator for different combinations of time‐varying state and input delays.     

Output‐feedback tracking in causal nonminimum‐phase nonlinear systems using higher‐order sliding modes

Asymptotic output‐feedback tracking in a class of causal nonminimum phase uncertain nonlinear systems is addressed via sliding mode techniques. Sliding mode control is proposed for robust stabilization of the output tracking error in the presence of a bounded disturbance. The output reference profile and the unknown input/disturbance are supposed to be described by unknown linear exogenous systems of a given order. Local asymptotic stability of the output tracking error dynamics along with the boundedness of the internal states are proven. The unstable internal states are estimated asymptotically via the proposed multistage observer that is based on the method of extended system center. A higher‐order sliding mode observer/differentiator is used for the exact estimation of the input–output states in a finite time. The bounded disturbance is reconstructed asymptotically. A numerical example illustrates the efficiency of the proposed output‐feedback tracking approach developed for causal nonminimum phase nonlinear systems. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Adaptive tracking for MIMO nonlinear systems with Unknown fast time‐varying parameters

In this paper, we consider a class of MIMO nonlinear systems with fast time‐varying parametric uncertainties. First, the tracking problem of general nonlinearly time‐varyingly parameterized systems is solved. Then, a Lyapunov‐based singularity free adaptive controller is proposed for the considered system. Specifically, an estimation approach with a proportional plus integral adaptation scheme is utilized to update the estimations of the unknown parameters under a mild assumption that the signs of the leading minors of the input gain matrix are known. The asymptotic stability is achieved with full state feedback. Furthermore, we design an output feedback controller by utilizing a standard high‐gain observer and achieve uniformly ultimately bounded convergence. Simulation examples illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods.     

Adaptive learning control of linear systems by output error feedback

This paper addresses the problem of designing an output error feedback tracking control for single-input, single-output uncertain linear systems when the reference output signal is smooth and periodic with known period T. The considered systems are required to be observable, minimum phase, with known relative degree and known high frequency gain sign. By developing in Fourier series expansion a suitable unknown periodic input reference signal, an output error feedback adaptive learning control is designed which ‘learns’ the input reference signal by identifying its Fourier coefficients: bounded closed-loop signals and global exponential tracking of both the input and the output reference signals are obtained when the Fourier series expansion is finite, while global exponential convergence of the input and output tracking errors into arbitrarily small residual sets is achieved otherwise. The structure of the proposed controller depends only on the relative degree, the reference signal period, the high frequency gain sign and the number of estimated Fourier coefficients.     

Robust discrete‐time output feedback model reference control design with state and unknown input estimation

For MIMO discrete‐time linear systems with unknown input in which the matching condition does not hold, the use of estimation method in an output feedback controller is proposed in this paper. Provided that the variation of unknown input in the two consecutive sampling instances is not changed significantly, both the system state and unknown input can be simultaneously estimated by our proposed observer algorithm with the estimation error being constrained in a small bounded region of the order of O(T). Then, a method utilizing command generator tracker is designed to generate the reference model. Concurrently with the estimations of the system state and unknown input are used in the controller where it can cause the tracking error to be bounded in a small region with the guaranteed system stability. Finally, the feasibility of our algorithm can be proved to be valid through the demonstration of a simulation‐based example. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Trigger‐based tracking control for a class of uncertain nonlinear systems via an event‐triggered extended state observer

An event‐triggered observer‐based output feedback control issue together with triggered input is investigated for a class of uncertain nonlinear systems subject to unknown external disturbances. Two separate event‐triggered conditions are located on the measurement channel and control channel, respectively. An event‐triggered extended state observer (ETESO) is employed to estimate unmeasurable states and compensate uncertainties and disturbances in real time while it is not required for real‐time output measurement. Then, combined with backstepping method and active disturbance rejection control, an output feedback control scheme is proposed, where an event‐triggered input is developed for reducing the communication rate between the controller and the actuator. The triggered instants are determined by a time‐varying event‐triggered condition. Two simulations, including a numerical example and an permanent‐magnet motor, are illustrated to verify the effectiveness of the proposed schemes.     

Global practical tracking of a class of nonlinear systems using linear sampled-data control

This paper considers the problem of global practical tracking via sampled-data control for a class of uncertain nonlinear systems. Under a lower triangular linear growth condition, a sampled-data state feedback controller is first constructed such that the states are globally bounded and the error between the system output and the reference signal will be rendered smaller than a given tolerance. When only the output of the system is measurable, a sampled-data output feedback controller, whose observer and control law are both linear, is constructed to solve the global practical tracking problem.     

Robust sigma–delta generalised proportional integral observer based control of a ‘buck’ converter with uncertain loads

This article describes the design of an observer based robust linear output feedback controller for the regulation and output reference trajectory tracking tasks in switched ‘buck’ converter circuits feeding a completely unknown time-varying load. The state-dependent perturbation effects of the unknown load resistance are on-line estimated by means of a generalised proportional integral (GPI) observer, which represents the dual counterpart of GPI controllers introduced in Fliess, Márquez, Delaleau and Sira-Ramírez (Fliess, M., Márquez, R., Delaleau, E., and Sira-Ramírez, H. (2002), ‘Correcteurs Proportionnels-intégraux Géneralisés’, ESAIM: Control, Optimisation and Calculus of Variations, 7, 23–41). The reconstructed perturbation complements the controller in a cancellation effort which allows the core of the feedback controller to become a traditional proportional derivative (PD) controller. The designed average feedback controller is then implemented via a sigma–delta-modulator, which effectively translates the designed continuous average feedback control input signal into a discrete valued switched input signal driving the converter's input switch and preserving all relevant features of the average design. The Appendix collects some generalities about GPI observers.     

Adaptive decentralized finite‐time output tracking control for MIMO interconnected nonlinear systems with output constraints and actuator faults

In this work, we present a novel adaptive decentralized finite‐time fault‐tolerant control algorithm for a class of multi‐input–multi‐output interconnected nonlinear systems with output constraint requirements for each vertex. The actuator for each system can be subject to unknown multiplicative and additive faults. Parametric system uncertainties that model the system dynamics for each vertex can be effectively dealt with by the proposed control scheme. The control input gain functions of the nonlinear systems can be not fully known and state dependent. Backstepping design with a tan‐type barrier Lyapunov function and a new structure of stabilizing function is presented. We show that under the proposed control scheme, with the use of graph theory, finite‐time convergence of the system output tracking error into a small set around zero is guaranteed for each vertex, while the time‐varying constraint requirement on the system output tracking error for each vertex will not be violated during operation. An illustrative example on 2 interacting 2‐degree‐of‐freedom robot manipulators is presented in the end to further demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme.