Design of a grey-prediction self-organizing fuzzy controller for active suspension systems

Self-organizing fuzzy controllers (SOFCs) have excellent learning capabilities. They have been proposed for the manipulation of active suspension systems. However, it is difficult to select the parameters of an SOFC appropriately, and an SOFC may extensively modify its fuzzy rules during the control process when the parameters selected for it are inappropriate. To eliminate this problem, this study developed a grey-prediction self-organizing fuzzy controller (GPSOFC) for active suspension systems. The GPSOFC introduces a grey-prediction algorithm into an SOFC, in order to pre-correct its fuzzy rules for the control of active suspension systems. This design solves the problem of SOFCs with inappropriately chosen parameters. To evaluate the feasibility of the proposed method, this study applied the GPSOFC to the manipulation of an active hydraulic-servo suspension system, in order to determine its control performance. Experimental results demonstrated that the GPSOFC achieved better control performance than either the SOFC or the passive method of active suspension control.     

Active noise control of flexible linkage mechanism with piezoelectric actuators

An active noise control method for flexible linkage mechanism systems with piezoelectric actuators and strain gauge sensors is studied. By employing a set of wave number transformations on the original equations of motion of the flexible linkage mechanisms, a new set of equations of motion is obtained, in which the unknown variables can describe the structural acoustic radiation level of the mechanism system directly. On the basis of the new equations, the active noise control of the flexible linkage mechanism system with piezoelectric actuators is discussed. Firstly, the optimal control forces are determined based on the optimal control theory. Secondly, the controller of the system that consists of the output feedback and the disturbance feed-forward control laws is presented. Simulations show that the method presented in this paper is valid.     

Type-2 fuzzy sets applied to multivariable self-organizing fuzzy logic controllers for regulating anesthesia

In this paper, novel interval and general type-2 self-organizing fuzzy logic controllers (SOFLCs) are proposed for the automatic control of anesthesia during surgical procedures. The type-2 SOFLC is a hierarchical adaptive fuzzy controller able to generate and modify its rule-base in response to the controller's performance. The type-2 SOFLC uses type-2 fuzzy sets derived from real surgical data capturing patient variability in monitored physiological parameters during anesthetic sedation, which are used to define the footprint of uncertainty (FOU) of the type-2 fuzzy sets. Experimental simulations were carried out to evaluate the performance of the type-2 SOFLCs in their ability to control anesthetic delivery rates for maintaining desired physiological set points for anesthesia (muscle relaxation and blood pressure) under signal and patient noise. Results show that the type-2 SOFLCs can perform well and outperform previous type-1 SOFLC and comparative approaches for anesthesia control producing lower performance errors while using better defined rules in regulating anesthesia set points while handling the control uncertainties. The results are further supported by statistical analysis which also show that zSlices general type-2 SOFLCs are able to outperform interval type-2 SOFLC in terms of their steady state performance.     

Fractional-order integral resonant control of collocated smart structures

This paper proposes a fractional-order integral controller, FI, which is a simple, robust and well-performing technique for vibration control in smart structures with collocated sensors and actuators. This new methodology is compared with the most relevant controllers for smart structures. It is demonstrated that the proposed controller improves the robustness of the closed-loop system to changes in the mass of the payload at the tip. The previous controllers are robust in the sense of being insensitive to spillover and maintaining the closed-loop stability when changes occur in the plant parameters. However, the phase margin of such closed-loop systems (and, therefore, their damping) may change significantly as a result of these parameter variations. In this paper the possibility of increasing the phase margin robustness by using a fractional-order controller with a very simple structure is explored. This controller has been applied to an experimental smart structure, and simulations and experiments have shown the improvement attained with this new technique in the removal of the vibration in the structure when the mass of the payload at the tip changes.     

Fuzzy-identification-based adaptive backstepping control using a self-organizing fuzzy system

In this paper, a fuzzy-identification-based adaptive backstepping control (FABC) scheme is proposed. The FABC system is composed of a backstepping controller and a robust controller. The backstepping controller, which uses a self-organizing fuzzy system (SFS) with the structure and parameter learning phases to on-line estimate the controlled system dynamics, is the principal controller, and the robust controller is designed to dispel the effect of approximation error introduced by the SFS. The developed SFS automatically generates and prunes the fuzzy rules by the proposed structure adaptation algorithm and the parameters of the fuzzy rules and membership functions tunes on-line in the Lyapunov sense. Thus, the overall closed-loop FABC system can guarantee that the tracking error and parameter estimation error are uniformly ultimately bounded; and the tracking error converges to a desired small neighborhood around zero. Finally, the proposed FABC system is applied to a chaotic dynamic system to show its effectiveness. The simulation results verify that the proposed FABC system can achieve favorable tracking performance even with unknown controlled system dynamics.     

Bidirectional active control of structures with type-2 fuzzy PD and PID

Proportional-derivative and proportional-integral-derivative (PD/PID) controllers are popular algorithms in structure vibration control. In order to maintain minimum regulation error, the PD/PID control require big proportional and derivative gains. The control performances are not satisfied because of the big uncertainties in the buildings. In this paper, type-2 fuzzy system is applied to compensate the unknown uncertainties, and is combined with the PD/PID control. We prove the stability of these fuzzy PD and PID controllers. The sufficient conditions can be used for choosing the gains of PD/PID. The theory results are verified by a two-storey building prototype. The experimental results validate our analysis.     

Optimal placement of active bars in active vibration control for piezoelectric intelligent truss structures with random parameters

Considering the randomness of physical parameters of structural material, geometric dimensions of active bars and passive bars, applied loads and control forces simultaneously, the optimization of active bar’s placement and feedback gains for the vibration control of intelligent truss structures are studied in this paper. Firstly, the performance function is developed based on the maximization of dissipation energy due to control action. Then, the optimal mathematical model with the reliability constraints on dynamic stress and displacement response is built. The numerical feature of dynamic response based on probability of intelligent structure is developed. Finally, a planar intelligent truss structure is used as an example to demonstrate the rationality and validity of the presented model and approach in structural active vibration control.     

Active vibration control of flexible structures using delayed position feedback

The paper discusses the use of a simple position control system approach to improve the performance of lightly damped dynamic systems. This approach uses a delayed position feedback signal to actively control the vibrations of flexible structures. A complete analysis of the stability of a single-link flexible manipulator under time delay control is presented and critical values of time delay for a given controller gain have been determined. The paper also presents a short comparison between the delayed feedback signal control and the linear quadratic regulator.     

A fuzzy logic based supervisory hierarchical control scheme for real time pressure control

This paper describes a supervisory hierarchical fuzzy controller （SHFC） for regulating pressure in a real-time pilot pressure control system. The input scaling factor tuning of a direct expert controller is made using the error and process input parameters in a closed loop system in order to obtain better controller performance for set-point change and load disturbances. This on-line tuning method reduces operator involvement and enhances the controller performance to a wide operating range. The hierarchical control scheme consists of an intelligent upper level supervisory fuzzy controller and a lower level direct fuzzy controller. The upper level controller provides a mechanism to the main goal of the system and the lower level controller delivers the solutions to a particular situation. The control algorithm for the proposed scheme has been developed and tested using an ARM7 microcontroller-based embedded target board for a nonlinear pressure process having dead time. To demonstrate the effectiveness, the results of the proposed hierarchical controller, fuzzy controller and conventional proportional-integral （PI） controller are analyzed. The results prove that the SHFC performance is better in terms of stability and robustness than the conventional control methods.     

Continuous bounded controllers for active control of structures

This paper considers nonlinear controller under bounded capacity of the actuators. The controller is first derived based on bang-bang type controllers. In order to avoid high-speed switching effect, a continuous function is used to replace signum function in bang-bang controller. Although a variety of continuous and bounded functions are available, a hyperbolic tangent is chosen as the candidate of the controller. The proposed control law is then applied to three- and six-storey buildings utilising active bracing systems. Different earthquake excitations with various intensities are used in the simulation to show the potential benefit of the proposed control law. Numerical results show that in contrast to bang-bang type controllers that utilise maximum capacity of the actuator, the proposed controller is adaptive in the sense that the maximum capacity of the actuator is utilised when only needed. In addition, the proposed controller can avoid the high-speed switching effects presence in the bang-bang controllers if the weighting variables are chosen appropriately.     

Robust control of flexible structures with stable bandpass controllers

In this paper, a control law for the active vibration control of mechanical flexible systems is considered. The proposed strategy minimizes an index and results in a stable stabilizing controller with bandpass frequency shape, due to the presence of zeros at the origin. The control authority is thus effective in a chosen band of frequency, resulting in a selective broadband control action, as opposed to narrow-band (tonal) vibration reduction. Moreover, the explicit closed-form solution of the controller is also obtained, thus avoiding numerical calculation of the solution of the Riccati equations, which can be ill-conditioned in the case of very high-order, poorly damped flexible systems. The parametrization of all the controllers is also given and a family of controllers with the above properties is deduced. The case is also obtained as a byproduct. The controller is based on a colocated actuators/sensors pair strategy and numerical simulations are presented, showing the robustness of the proposed approach even for systems with zero damping. Finally, experimental results on a skin panel of a Boeing 717 aircraft also prove the effectiveness of the proposed approach in practical complex applications, with global vibration reduction performances.     

桁架结构振动的主动模糊控制中主动杆数目与位置优化

研究了采用自适应模糊控制器抑制桁架结构振动时的主动杆数目与位置优化问题.通过定义输入能量相关矩阵优化了主动杆的数目.基于主动杆的控制能量配置准则,给出了主动杆优化配置的模型.研究基于整数编码的遗传算法用于大型离散体中的作动器组合优化问题.最后针对挠性空间智能桁架结构的振动控制仿真,使用基于整数编码的遗传算法(GAs)优化主动杆位置.结果表明对于采用自适应模糊控制律的离散体结构振动控制是行之有效的.     

A class of active LQG optimal actuators

Active and passive vehicle suspensions viewed as control actuators are discussed using the notion of passivity developed in network theory. For the specific example of a two-degree-of-freedom linear model of a vehicle, it is shown that for the given quadratic performance index, only active optimal suspension realizations are possible.     

Position control of electro-hydraulic actuator system using fuzzy logic controller optimized by particle swarm optimization

The position control system of an electro-hydraulic actuator system (EHAS) is investigated in this paper. The EHAS is developed by taking into consideration the nonlinearities of the system: the friction and the internal leakage. A variable load that simulates a realistic load in robotic excavator is taken as the trajectory reference. A method of control strategy that is implemented by employing a fuzzy logic controller (FLC) whose parameters are optimized using particle swarm optimization (PSO) is proposed. The scaling factors of the fuzzy inference system are tuned to obtain the optimal values which yield the best system performance. The simulation results show that the FLC is able to track the trajectory reference accurately for a range of values of orifice opening. Beyond that range, the orifice opening may introduce chattering, which the FLC alone is not sufficient to overcome. The PSO optimized FLC can reduce the chattering significantly. This result justifies the implementation of the proposed method in position control of EHAS.     

A cascade control approach to active suspension using pneumatic actuators

Operators of forest machinery suffer from intensive whole body vibrations, which are big threats to their health. Therefore, it is important to investigate effective seat undercarriages and control methods for vibration reduction. This paper addresses the control problem of a novel seat undercarriage with pneumatic actuators customized for forest machinery. A two‐layer cascade control structure is developed, where the top layer consists of a group of proportional controllers to regulate the position of pneumatic actuators and the bottom layer is a sliding mode controller for force and stiffness tracking. The advantage of the sliding mode control is to achieve robust control performance with coarse system models. The paper demonstrates that the proposed control structure is better than a traditional PID controller. The robust stability of the sliding mode controller is proved by the Lyapunov's method. Experiments show its capability of reducing at least 20% amplitude of seat vibrations from 0.5 to 1 Hz.     

Intelligent fault-tolerant system of vibration control for flexible structures

This paper describes an intelligent fault-tolerant control method for vibration control of flexible structures. We consider a case where the fault phenomena of the control system for flexible structures can be treated as a change of system parameters. Therefore, the adaptive control method can be applied to a vibration control system for flexible structures with a fault. In this paper, a neural network (NN) adaptive control system is used to compensate for the change in the parameters of a plant with a fault. When the characteristics of the plant and of a nominal model have been agreed by a NN adaptive control system, the control method designed for the nominal model, such as decoupling feedback control or linearizing feedback control, can be used even if the change in the system parameters has been caused by a fault. To confirm the effectiveness of the proposed fault-tolerant control method, the simulational results from a 5-link robotic arm are shown at the end of the paper. This work was presented, in part, at the Fourth International Symposium on Artificial Life and Robotics, Oita, Japan, January 19–22, 1999     

An active vibration absorber of smart panel by using a decomposed parallel fuzzy control structure

This study proposes novel development of piezoelectric actuators as elements of smart structures. The primary goal of this work is to control actively the vibrations of smart structures by using a decomposed parallel fuzzy control approach. This study attempts to demonstrate the general methodology by decomposing a large-scale system into smaller subsystems in a parallel structure so that the proposed fuzzy control methodology developed here can be applied for studying a complex system. The paper shows a very promising application field, while the results obtained show that the fuzzy approach can be much better than other conventional control methods used till now. Consequently, the creation of new control structures is very important for new application possibilities of fuzzy control because they enable one to minimize the completeness of the problem solved as well as to utilize the capacity of computational technologies in full range.     

A hybrid SOF-PID controller for a MIMO biped robot

The application of the hybrid self-organizing fuzzy (SOF) PID controller to a multiinput multioutput nonlinear biped robot is studied in this article. The SOF-PID controller was initially studied by H.B. Kazemian in 1998. Actually, his SOF-PID controller has limits. The supervisory capacity of the SOF-PID controller can adjust only certain kinds of parameters. Here the hybrid SOF-PID controller is introduced to tune some kinds of parameters, and it was tested on a MIMO biped robot. In the experiment, the hybrid SOF-PID controller shows a better performance than the SOF-PID. This work was presented in part at the 10th International Symposium on Artificial Life and Robotics, Oita, Japan, February 4–6, 2005     

Application of the active disturbance rejection control structure to improve the controller performance of uncertain pneumatic actuators

In many robotic applications, pneumatic actuators are not adequate for tracking control tasks given the poor performance obtained with traditional control techniques like PID controllers. In this paper we show that the so‐called Active Disturbance Rejection Control Structure (ADRCS), combined with a discontinuous observer and standard or robust algorithms in the controller block, provides a good solution to regulation and tracking control problems of pneumatic actuators. The discontinuous observer estimates the velocity, and whose discontinuous nature permits to estimate also the disturbances affecting the system, allowing to use a very simple model of the actuator and avoiding an off‐line parameter identification. To analyze the observer ability to estimate the disturbances, we test three different algorithms in the controller block, the standard PD and two discontinuous controllers proposed elsewhere. The performance of the closed loop system is evaluated through experimental results using a performance index based on an norm, for constants and sinusoidal references. Also, we compare the performance of the proposed algorithms with the controllers with those using the same control algorithm but not including the disturbance compensation, showing the important effect of the disturbance estimation included in the ADRCS on the overall controller performance.     

基于特征模型的挠性结构自适应振动控制

航天器是一种由中心刚体和挠性附件组成的刚柔耦合复杂系统，由于系统调姿或外部扰动作用时将引起振动，尤其是在平衡位置的小幅度振动对姿态稳定度和指向控制精度严重影响，并且难以控制．为了解决该问题，采用基于特征模型的黄金分割自适应控制方法，并引入逻辑微分阻尼项进行振动主动控制．建立了刚柔耦合结构实验平台，进行了包括位置设定点及转动振动主动控制的算法实验比较，结果表明，采用的基于特征模型的方法得到了比较理想的振动抑制效果，尤其是对低频小幅值振动的抑制，在相同条件下，与传统控制方法相比，大大减少了振动抑制的时间．实验研究表明采用的算法快速抑制振动的有效性．