Adaptive actuator failure compensation design for unknown chaotic multi‐input systems

In this paper, an adaptive control approach is designed for compensating the faults in the actuators of chaotic systems and maintaining the acceptable system stability. We propose a state‐feedback model reference adaptive control scheme for unknown chaotic multi‐input systems. Only the dimensions of the chaotic systems are required to be known. Based on Lyapunov stability theory, new adaptive control laws are synthesized to accommodate actuator failures and system nonlinearities. An illustrative example is studied. The simulation results show the effectiveness of the design method. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Adaptive backstepping repetitive learning control design for nonlinear discrete‐time systems with periodic uncertainties

This paper addresses a tracking problem for uncertain nonlinear discrete‐time systems in which the uncertainties, including parametric uncertainty and external disturbance, are periodic with known periodicity. Repetitive learning control (RLC) is an effective tool to deal with periodic unknown components. By using the backstepping procedures, an adaptive RLC law with periodic parameter estimation is designed. The overparameterization problem is overcome by postponing the parameter estimation to the last backstepping step, which could not be easily solved in robust adaptive control. It is shown that the proposed adaptive RLC law without overparameterization can guarantee the perfect tracking and boundedness of the states of the whole closed‐loop systems in presence of periodic uncertainties. In addition, the effectiveness of the developed controller is demonstrated by an implementation example on a single‐link flexible‐joint robot. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Fully distributed tracking control for non‐identical multi‐agent systems with matching uncertainty

This article addresses the fully distributed consensus tracking control problem of linear multi‐agent systems with parameter uncertainties. First, a new class of distributed protocol, based on the relative states of neighbors, is proposed. Theoretical analysis indicates that the considered problem can be solved if the control gain constant of the protocol is larger than the norm bound of the leader's nonlinear inputs. Furthermore, a distributed adaptive control protocol is proposed for the case without available global information. The distributed consensus tracking control problem of uncertain linear multi‐agent systems is solved based only on local information under the proposed adaptive protocol. Finally, an application in low‐Earth‐orbit satellite formation flying is provided to illustrate the theoretical results. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Managing readiness-relevant activities for the organizational dimension of ERP implementation

An organization requires performing readiness-relevant activities to ensure successful implementation of an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. This paper develops a novel approach to managing these interrelated activities to get ready for implementing an ERP system. The approach enables an organization to evaluate its ERP implementation readiness by assessing the degree to which it can achieve the interrelated readiness relevant activities using fuzzy cognitive maps. Based on the interrelationship degrees among the activities, the approach clusters the activities into manageable groups and prioritizes them. To help work out a readiness improvement plan, scenario analysis is conducted.     

Particle Swarm Optimization inspired by starling flock behavior

Swarm intelligence is a meta-heuristic algorithm which is widely used nowadays for efficient solution of optimization problems. Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) is one of the most popular types of swarm intelligence algorithm. This paper proposes a new Particle Swarm Optimization algorithm called Starling PSO based on the collective response of starlings. Although PSO performs well in many problems, algorithms in this category lack mechanisms which add diversity to exploration in the search process. Our proposed algorithm introduces a new mechanism into PSO to add diversity, a mechanism which is inspired by the collective response behavior of starlings. This mechanism consists of three major steps: initialization, which prepares alternative populations for the next steps; identifying seven nearest neighbors; and orientation change which adjusts velocity and position of particles based on those neighbors and selects the best alternative. Because of this collective response mechanism, the Starling PSO explores a wider area of the search space and thus avoids suboptimal solutions. We tested the algorithm with commonly used numerical benchmarking functions as well as applying it to a real world application involving data clustering. In these evaluations, we compared Starling PSO with a variety of state of the art algorithms. The results show that Starling PSO improves the performance of the original PSO and yields the optimal solution in many numerical benchmarking experiments. It also gives the best results in almost all clustering experiments.     

Adaptive robust boundary control of shaft vibrations under perturbations with unknown upper bounds

This paper presents robust and adaptive boundary control designs to stabilize the two‐dimensional vibration of hybrid shaft model. The hybrid shaft is mathematically represented by a set of partial differential equations, governing the shaft vibrations, coupled to ordinary differential equations, describing rigid body spinning and dynamic boundary conditions. The control objective is to stabilize the transverse vibrations of the perturbed shaft while regulating the spinning rate. To achieve this, the paper first establishes robust boundary control laws that fulfil the control objective in the presence of modeling uncertainties and external disturbances operating over the shaft domain and boundary. Lyapunov‐based analyses show that the proposed robust control exponentially stabilizes the shaft with vanishing distributive perturbations, while assuring ultimately bounded vibrations in the case of nonvanishing perturbations. Then, adaptive control philosophy is utilized to achieve redesigned robust controllers that only use online adaptation of control gains without acquiring the knowledge of bounds on perturbations, as well as dynamic parameters. An advantage of this design is avoiding an overconservative robust control law, which may induce poor stability and chattering in tackling system perturbations with unknown upper bounds. Simulations through finite element method illustrate the results. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A self-adaptive weighted affinity propagation clustering for key frames extraction on human action recognition

In this paper, we propose a novel approach for key frames extraction on human action recognition from 3D video sequences. To represent human actions, an Energy Feature (EF), combining kinetic energy and potential energy, is extracted from 3D video sequences. A Self-adaptive Weighted Affinity Propagation (SWAP) algorithm is then proposed to extract the key frames. Finally, we employ SVM to recognize human actions on the EFs of selected key frames. The experiments show the information including whole action course can be effectively extracted by our method, and we obtain good recognition performance without losing classification accuracy. Moreover, the recognition speed is greatly improved.     

ECG heart beat classification method based on modified ABC algorithm

Electrocardiogram is the most commonly used tool for the diagnosis of cardiologic diseases. In order to help cardiologists to diagnose the arrhythmias automatically, new methods for automated, computer aided ECG analysis are being developed. In this paper, a Modified Artificial Bee Colony (MABC) algorithm for ECG heart beat classification is introduced. It is applied to ECG data set which is obtained from MITBIH database and the result of MABC is compared with seventeen other classifier's accuracy.In classification problem, some features have higher distinctiveness than others. In this study, in order to find higher distinctive features, a detailed analysis has been done on time domain features. By using the right features in MABC algorithm, high classification success rate (99.30%) is obtained. Other methods generally have high classification accuracy on examined data set, but they have relatively low or even poor sensitivities for some beat types. Different data sets, unbalanced sample numbers in different classes have effect on classification result. When a balanced data set is used, MABC provided the best result as 97.96% among all classifiers.Not only part of the records from examined MITBIH database, but also all data from selected records are used to be able to use developed algorithm on a real time system in the future by using additional software modules and making adaptation on a specific hardware.     

An improved adaptive unscented Kalman filter for estimating the states of in‐wheel‐motored electric vehicle

Vehicle state is essential for active safety stability control. However, the accurate measurement of some vehicle states is difficult to achieve without the use of expensive equipment. To improve estimation accuracy in real time, this paper proposes an estimator of vehicle velocity based on the adaptive unscented Kalman filter (AUKF) for an in‐wheel‐motored electric vehicle (IWMEV). Given the merits of an independent drive structure, the tire forces of the IWMEV can be directly calculated through a vehicle dynamic model. Additionally, by means of the normalized innovation square, the validity of vehicle velocity estimation can be detected, and the sliding window length can be adjusted adaptively; thus, the steady‐state error and the dynamic performance of the IWMEV are demonstrated to be simultaneously improved over an alternative approach in comparisons. Then, an adaptive adjustment strategy for the noise covariance matrices is introduced to overcome the impact of parameter uncertainties. The numerically simulated and experimental results prove that the proposed vehicle velocity estimator based on AUKF not only improves estimation accuracy but also possesses strong robustness against parameter uncertainties. The deployment of the estimation algorithm by using a single‐chip microcomputer verifies the strong real‐time performance and easy‐to‐implement characteristics of the proposed algorithm.     

Controlling the multi‐plant networked system with external perturbations via adaptive model‐based event‐triggered strategy

This paper concerns the multi‐plant networked control system with external perturbations by applying the adaptive model‐based event‐triggered control strategy. Compared with existing works, we introduce multiple plants topology in order to smooth the information exchanges among different plants. Gained insight into the adaptive model features in the view of event‐triggered thought, the event‐triggered rules, determining when the control inputs update, are obtained using the Lyapunov technique to reduce the communication cost. By designing some adaptive updating laws combined with the concept of event‐triggered, the unknown parameters in uncertain multi‐plant networked control systems are real‐time online estimated and adjusted with respect to the relevant nominal systems at event‐triggered instants. To avoid Zeno phenomena, a lower bound of event‐triggered execution interval is discussed. Furthermore, given the external perturbations, gain stability theory is introduced to analyze the stability of multi‐plant networked control systems with bounded perturbations, and then the sufficient conditions related to the multiple plants topology structure are derived. Finally, a numerical simulation is provided to illustrate the effectiveness of our theoretic results.