PID Control of Planar Nonlinear Uncertain Systems in the Presence of Actuator Saturation

This paper investigates PID control design for a class of planar nonlinear uncertain systems in the presence of actuator saturation. Based on the bounds on the growth rates of the nonlinear uncertain function in the system model, the system is placed in a linear differential inclusion. Each vertex system of the linear differential inclusion is a linear system subject to actuator saturation. By placing the saturated PID control into a convex hull formed by the PID controller and an auxiliary linear feedback law, we establish conditions under which an ellipsoid is contractively invariant and hence is an estimate of the domain of attraction of the equilibrium point of the closed-loop system. The equilibrium point corresponds to the desired set point for the system output. Thus, the location of the equilibrium point and the size of the domain of attraction determine, respectively, the set point that the output can achieve and the range of initial conditions from which this set point can be reached. Based on these conditions, the feasible set points can be determined and the design of the PID control law that stabilizes the nonlinear uncertain system at a feasible set point with a large domain of attraction can then be formulated and solved as a constrained optimization problem with constraints in the form of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs). Application of the proposed design to a magnetic suspension system illustrates the design process and the performance of the resulting PID control law.      

Active disturbance rejection based trajectory linearization control for hypersonic reentry vehicle with bounded uncertainties

This paper investigates a novel compound control scheme combined with the advantages of trajectory linearization control (TLC) and alternative active disturbance rejection control (ADRC) for hypersonic reentry vehicle (HRV) attitude tracking system with bounded uncertainties. Firstly, in order to overcome actuator saturation problem, nonlinear tracking differentiator (TD) is applied in the attitude loop to achieve fewer control consumption. Then, linear extended state observers (LESO) are constructed to estimate the uncertainties acting on the LTV system in the attitude and angular rate loop. In addition, feedback linearization (FL) based controllers are designed using estimates of uncertainties generated by LESO in each loop, which enable the tracking error for closed-loop system in the presence of large uncertainties to converge to the residual set of the origin asymptotically. Finally, the compound controllers are derived by integrating with the nominal controller for open-loop nonlinear system and FL based controller. Also, comparisons and simulation results are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the control strategy.     

Actuator fault tolerant control using adaptive RBFNN fuzzy sliding mode controller for coaxial octorotor UAV

In this paper, a robust controller for a Six Degrees of Freedom (6 DOF) coaxial octorotor helicopter control is proposed in presence of actuator faults. Radial Base Function Neural Network (RBFNN), Fuzzy Logic Control approach (FLC) and Sliding Mode Control (SMC) technique are used to design a controller, named Fault Tolerant Control (FTC), for each subsystem of the octorotor helicopter. The proposed FTC scheme allows avoiding difficult modeling, attenuating the chattering effect of the SMC, reducing the rules number of the fuzzy controller, and guaranteeing the stability and the robustness of the system. The simulation results show that the proposed FTC can greatly alleviate the chattering effect, good tracking in presence of actuator faults.     

Structural and piezoelectric properties of textured NLKNS-CZ thick films and their application in planar piezoactuator

0.97(Na_0.5-xLi_xK_0.5)(Nb_0.89Sb_0.11)O₃-0.03CaZrO₃ [(N_0.5-xL_xK)(NS)-CZ] piezoceramic (x = 0.325) has a pseudocubic-tetragonal-orthorhombic (PC-T-O) multi-structure. The PC structure formed in this piezoceramic was identified as the R3m rhombohedral structure. This piezoceramic showed the large piezoelectric charge constant (d₃₃) of 515 pC/N due to the PC-T-O multi-structure. The NaNbO₃ (NN) templates were used to texture the (N_0.5-xL_xK)(NS)-CZ thick films along the (001) direction, and the textured thick film (x = 0.0375) had a large Lotgering factor of 95.6%. The PC-T-O multi-structure was observed in this thick film (x = 0.0375), but the thick film (x = 0.0325) showed a PC-O structure owing to the diffusion of the NN templates into the thick film. The textured thick film (x = 0.0375) exhibited an increased d₃₃ of 625 pC/N because of the PC-T-O multi-structure and the lineup of grains along the [001] direction. A textured thick film (x = 0.0375) was used to fabricate a planar-type actuator to confirm its applicability to electrical devices. This actuator exhibits large acceleration (580.3 G) and displacement (150 μm) at a low electric field of 0.2 kV/mm with a short response time of 3.0 ms. Therefore, the (N_0.5-xL_xK)(NS)-CZ thick films are excellent lead-free piezoceramics.     

Detection and mitigation of actuator attacks on small unmanned aircraft systems

Unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) are susceptible to malicious attacks originated by intelligent adversaries, and the actuators constitute one of the critical attack surfaces. In this paper, the problem of detecting and mitigating attacks on the actuators of a small UAS is addressed. Three possible solutions of differing complexity and effectiveness are proposed to address the problem. The first method involves an active detection strategy, whereby carefully designed excitation signals are superimposed on the control commands to increase the detectability of the attack. In the second method, an unknown input observer is designed, which in addition to detecting the attack also estimates the magnitude of the attack. The third method entails designing an actuator system that makes use of variable frequency pulse-width modulated signals to improve the resilience of the actuator against malicious attacks. The effectiveness of the proposed methods is demonstrated using flight experiments and realistic MATLAB simulations that incorporate exogenous disturbances, such as steady winds, atmospheric turbulence, and measurement noise.     

Metal hydride actuator for a rescue jack driven by hydrogen desorption

This paper presents a metal hydride (MH) actuator rescue jack that uses hydrogen-absorbing alloy as its pressure source. The MH actuator is attached to a thin and flexible fiber-reinforced rubber bag end effector, enabling it to pry open narrow and rough gaps. The proposed MH rescue jack was prepared with different amounts of alloy (6–15 g). The results showed that, with only 6 g of alloy, the rescue jack was able to jack up a 100 kg weight to a height of 10 mm within 1 min by heating the alloy container to 50 °C. Moreover, the jack-up speed increased as the amount of alloy increased. A mathematical model was derived from the jack-up operation tests to estimate the jack-up height, with the aim of designing appropriate amounts of hydrogen-absorbing alloys for rescue jack development. According to the experimental results, the response of the jack-up height was modeled as a first order system in time domain. The model was defined as a function of alloy amount, and its validity was assessed by comparing the experimental and simulation results. The results were in good agreement which confirmed the potential of the proposed model as a design tool for jacks from the viewpoint of time constant.     

A switching anti-windup design based on partitioning of the input space

This paper revisits the problem of enlarging the domain of attraction of a linear system with multiple inputs subject to actuator saturation by designing a switching anti-windup compensator. The closed-loop system consisting of the plant, the controller and the anti-windup compensator is first equivalently formulated as a linear system with input deadzone. We then partition the input space into several regions. In one of these regions, all inputs saturate with the time-derivative of the saturated input being zero. In each of the remaining regions, there is a unique input that does not saturate. The time derivative of the deadzone function associated with the unsaturating input is zero. By utilizing these special properties of the inputs on an existing piecewise Lyapunov function of the augmented state vector containing the deadzone function of inputs, we design a separate anti-windup gain for each region of the input space. The switching from one anti-windup gain to another is activated when the input signals leave one region for another, which can be implemented online since only the measurement of the input signals is required. Simulation results indicate that the proposed approach has the ability to obtain a significantly larger estimate of the domain of attraction than the existing approaches.