Cooperative control design for non-holonomic chained-form systems

Consensus and formation control problems for multiple non-holonomic chained-form systems are solved in this paper. For consensus problem, based on cascaded structure of the chained-form systems, it amounts to solving two consensus subproblems of two linear subsystems transformed from the original system. With the obtained consensus protocols and the method of virtual structure, decentralised formation controllers can then be designed. According to different desired motion patterns of the entire group, both the formation tracking and formation stabilisation problems can be considered. The significance of this paper lies in adapting theories from non-autonomous cascaded systems for cooperative control design for non-holonomic chained-form systems. A unique feature of our proposed solution is that all states can be cooperatively controlled to achieve the desired references for non-holonomic chained-form system. Simulation results are included to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods in solving cooperative control problems of non-holonomic chained-form systems.     

Lyapunov design of global state and output feedback trackers for non-holonomic control systems

In this paper, new results are obtained for the global tracking of a class of non-holonomic dynamic systems via state and output feedback. The tracking controllers are systematically constructed on the basis of a recursive technique and a full exploitation of the system structure. When disturbances occur in a non-holonomic chained system, it is shown how to modify the controller design procedure to yield robust tracking control laws. The proposed method is demonstrated and discussed by means of a benchmark non-holonomic knife-edge mechanical system.     

A system decomposition method for region tracking control of a non-holonomic mobile robot with dynamic parameter uncertainties

The tracking control problem of non-holonomic mobile robot systems has been extensively investigated in the past decades, however, most of the existing control strategies were developed specifically for the fixed-point tracking. This technical note focuses on the region tracking control for a non-holonomic mobile robot system with parameter uncertainties in the robot dynamics. With the system decomposition and adaptive control method, some restrictions imposed on the angular and linear velocities of the non-holonomic mobile robot in recent literature are removed, enabling to track dynamic trajectories with any values of the angular and line velocities. The proposed adaptive control scheme can simultaneously solve both the regulation and region tracking problems of a non-holonomic mobile robot with one passive wheel and two actuated wheels. By utilizing the designed control laws, the mobile robot system is able to globally reach inside a moving region specified by potential functions whose path can be a circular curve, a straight line, or sinusoidal curve, by using a single adaptive controller. Since the dynamic region can be specified arbitrarily small, the fixed-point tracking can be regarded as a special case of region tracking studied in this paper. Compared with the traditional fixed-point tracking, region tracking has more flexibility and better robustness. Numerical results are presented to show the effectiveness of the designed strategy.     

非完整机械控制系统的模型参考变结构控制

在参数扰动和外部干扰情况下,对非完整机械控制系统设计了变结构模型参考跟踪控制器,基于适当的矩阵分解,非线性控制理论中的输入－输出解耦概念及变结构控制理论,为解决干扰非完整机械控制系统的跟踪问题提出了三级控制设计过程,最后通过一非完整机械系统的例子（在给定平面上运动的垂直轮）的计算机仿真说明了提出方法的优越性。     

含时变不确定性线性系统的鲁棒跟踪控制

本文就含时变不确定性的线性系统,研究了鲁棒跟踪控制器的设计问题。文中利用Ｒｉｃ－ｃａｔｉ方程,给出了使系统输出鲁棒跟踪某一动态输入的线性控制律,对于匹配系统,跟踪误差可以任意小,从而得到实际跟踪;对于不满足匹配条件的系统,若另一些条件成立,则跟踪误差有界。     

链式系统的轨迹跟踪控制

研究了链式系统的轨迹跟踪控制问题,提出一种新的跟踪方案,设计出能实现全局轨迹跟踪的一维动态控制器,将其用于一类轮式机器人的控制中.仿真结果表明所提方法的有效性.     

State-feedback stabilisation for stochastic non-holonomic mobile robots with uncertain visual servoing parameters

The stabilising problem of stochastic non-holonomic mobile robots with uncertain parameters based on visual servoing is addressed in this paper. The model of non-holonomic mobile robots based on visual servoing is extended to the stochastic case, where their forward velocity and angular velocity are both subject to some stochastic disturbances. Based on backstepping technique, state-feedback stabilising controllers are designed for stochastic non-holonomic mobile robots. A switching control strategy for the original system is presented. The proposed controllers guarantee that the closed-loop system is asymptotically stabilised at the zero equilibrium point in probability.     

Model‐free adaptive formation control for unknown multiinput‐multioutput nonlinear heterogeneous discrete‐time multiagent systems with bounded disturbance

Based on the model‐free adaptive control, the distributed formation control problem is investigated for a class of unknown heterogeneous nonlinear discrete‐time multiagent systems with bounded disturbance. Two equivalent data models to the unknown multiagent systems are established through the dynamic linearization technique considering the circumstances with measurable and unmeasurable disturbances. Based on the obtained data models, two distributed controllers are designed with only using the input/output and disturbance data of the neighbor agents system. The tracking error of the closed‐loop system driven by the proposed controllers is shown to be bounded by the contraction mapping principle and inductive methods. An example illustrates the effectiveness of the proposed two distributed controllers.     

Robust formation tracking control of mobile robots via one-to-one time-varying communication

We solve the formation tracking control problem for mobile robots via linear control, under the assumption that each agent communicates only with one ‘leader’ robot and with one follower, hence forming a spanning-tree topology. We assume that the communication may be interrupted on intervals of time. As in the classical tracking control problem for non-holonomic systems, the swarm is driven by a fictitious robot which moves about freely and which is a leader to one robot only. Our control approach is decentralised and the control laws are linear with time-varying gains; in particular, this accounts for the case when position measurements may be lost over intervals of time. For both velocity-controlled and force-controlled systems, we establish uniform global exponential stability, hence consensus formation tracking, for the error system under a condition of persistency of excitation on the reference angular velocity of the virtual leader and on the control gains.     

受非完整约束移动机器人的跟踪控制

讨论受非完整约束移动机器人运动学模型和动力学模型的跟踪控制问题.通过把它们化成统一的标准型,提出了新的动态跟踪控制器.这些控制器具有维数低和没有奇异点的优点.仿真结果表明了所提出控制方法的有效性.     

An embedding approach for the design of state‐feedback tracking controllers for references with jumps

We study the problem of designing state‐feedback controllers to track time‐varying state trajectories that may exhibit jumps. Both plants and controllers considered are modeled as hybrid dynamical systems, which are systems with both continuous and discrete dynamics, given in terms of a flow set, a flow map, a jump set, and a jump map. Using recently developed tools for the study of stability in hybrid systems, we recast the tracking problem as the task of asymptotically stabilizing a set, the tracking set, and derive conditions for the design of state‐feedback tracking controllers with the property that the jump times of the plant coincide with those of the given reference trajectories. The resulting tracking controllers guarantee that solutions of the plant starting close to the reference trajectory stay close to it and that the difference between each solution of the controlled plant and the reference trajectory converges to zero asymptotically. Constructive conditions for tracking control design in terms of LMIs are proposed for a class of hybrid systems with linear maps and input‐triggered jumps. The results are illustrated by various examples. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Leader–follower tracking control with guaranteed consensus performance for interconnected systems with linear dynamic uncertain coupling

This paper considers the leader–follower tracking control problem for linear interconnected systems with undirected topology and linear dynamic coupling. Interactions between the systems are treated as linear dynamic uncertainty and are described in terms of integral quadratic constraints (IQCs). A consensus-type tracking control protocol is proposed for each system based on its state relative to its neighbours. In addition, a selected set of subsystems is used to control their relative states with respect to the leader. Two methods are proposed for the design of this control protocol. One method uses a coordinate transformation to recast the protocol design problem as a decentralised robust control problem for an auxiliary interconnected large-scale system. Another method is direct; it does not employ coordinate transformation, rather it also allows for more general linear uncertain interactions. Using these methods, sufficient conditions are obtained which guarantee that the system tracks the leader. These conditions guarantee a suboptimal bound on the system consensus and tracking performance. The proposed methods are compared using a simulation example, and their effectiveness is discussed. Also, algorithms are proposed for computing suboptimal controllers.     

Robust time-optimal control of constrained linear Systems

A version of dynamic programming, which computes level sets of the value function rather than the value function set itself, is used to design robust non-linear controllers for linear, discrete-time, dynamical systems subject to hard constraints on controls and states. The controller stabilizes the system and steers all trajectories emanating in a prescribed set to a control invariant set in minimum time. For the robust regulator problem, the control invariant terminal set is a neighborhood, preferably small, of the origin; for the robust tracking problem, the control invariant terminal set is a neighborhood of the invariant set in which the tracking error is zero. Two non-linear controllers which utilize the level sets of the value function, are described. The first requires the controller to solve, on-line, a modest linear program whose dimension is approximately the same as that of the control variable. The second decomposes each level set into a set of simplices; a piecewise linear control law, affine in each simplex, is then constructed.     

Robust ℋ2/ℋ∞/reference model dynamic output-feedback control synthesis

This article presents a new strategy to design robust model matching dynamic output-feedback controllers that guarantee tracking response specifications, disturbance rejection and noise attenuation. The proposed synthesis methodology, based on a multi-objective optimisation problem, can be applied to uncertain continuous or discrete-time linear time-invariant systems with polytopic uncertainty, leading to both full-order and reduced-order robust-performance dynamic controllers. The objective functions represent the ?_∞-norm of the difference between the closed-loop transfer function matrix, from the reference signals and the plant outputs and the reference model matrix, the ?_∞-norm of the closed-loop transfer function matrix from the disturbances and the plant outputs and the ?₂-norm of the closed-loop transfer function matrix from the measurement noises and the control inputs. An integral control action is also introduced in order to achieve zero steady-state error. In the case of MIMO systems, the proposed strategy can be applied to decouple the closed-loop control system choosing an appropriated reference model matrix. Two examples are presented to illustrate both SISO and MIMO systems control synthesis.     

Adaptive inverse dynamics control of robots with uncertain kinematics and dynamics

It has been about two decades since the first globally convergent adaptive tracking controller was derived for robots with dynamic uncertainties. However, not until recently has the problem of concurrent adaptation to both the kinematic and dynamic uncertainties found its solution. This adaptive controller belongs to passivity-based control. Though passivity-based controllers have many attractive properties, in general, they are not able to guarantee the uniform performance of the robot over the entire workspace. Even in the ideal case of perfect knowledge of the manipulator parameters, the closed-loop system remains nonlinear and coupled. Thus the closed-loop tracking performance is difficult to quantify, while the inverse dynamics controllers can overcome these deficiencies. Therefore, in this work, we will develop a new adaptive Jacobian tracking controller based on the inverse manipulator dynamics. Using the Lyapunov approach, we have proved that the end-effector motion tracking errors converge asymptotically to zero. Simulation results are presented to show the performance of the proposed controller.     

Global stabilisation of a class of generalised cascaded systems by homogeneous method

This paper considers the problem of global stabilisation of a class of generalised cascaded systems. By using the extended adding a power integrator technique, a global controller is first constructed for the driving subsystem. Then based on the homogeneous properties and polynomial assumption, it is shown that the stabilisation of the driving subsystem implies the stabilisation of the overall cascaded system. Meanwhile, by properly choosing some control parameters, the global finite-time stability of the closed-loop cascaded system is also established. The proposed control method has several new features. First, the nonlinear cascaded systems considered in the paper are more general than the conventional ones, since the powers in the nominal part of the driving subsystem are not required to be restricted to ratios of positive odd numbers. Second, the proposed method has some flexible parameters which provide the possibility for designing continuously differentiable controllers for cascaded systems, while the existing designed controllers for such kind of cascaded systems are only continuous. Third, the homogenous and polynomial conditions adopted for the driven subsystem are easier to verify when compared with the matching conditions that are widely used previously. Furthermore, the efficiency of the proposed control method is validated by its application to finite-time tracking control of non-holonomic wheeled mobile robot.     

含未校准摄像机参数的非完整移动机器人自适应动态反馈跟踪控制

研究基于视觉伺服的不确定非完整移动机器人的跟踪控制问题.基于视觉反馈和状态输入变换,提出一类非完整运动学系统的不确定模型,并运用两个新的变换,对3种不同情况分别设计自适应动态反馈控制器来跟踪不确定系统的期望轨迹.利用李雅普诺夫方法和推广的Barbalat引理,严格证明了误差系统的收敛性.仿真结果验证了所提方法的有效性.     

From Nonlinear to Fuzzy Approaches in Trajectory Tracking Control of Wheeled Mobile Robots

In this paper, two knowledge based controllers are proposed to overcome the difficulties of a computed torque nonlinear controller (NC) in perfect trajectory tracking of nonholonomic wheeled mobile robots (WMRs). First, the effects of different dynamic models developed in angular and Cartesian coordinate systems are fully examined on the persistent excitation condition and consequently on the trajectory tracking performance of WMRs. Using the dynamic model coordinated in the Cartesian frame as the base of the NC results in perfect compensation of large position off‐tracks and unbiased estimation of the plant's unknown parameters. However, using the WMR's dynamic model with rotation angles of driving wheels as the base of nonlinear and fuzzy controllers leads to accurate orientation tracking. Through replacing the proportional and differential terms of the NC by fuzzy functions, a fuzzy nonlinear controller (FNC) is generated. Due to the complicated dynamics of the WMR in which the center of mass does not coincide with the center of rotation, the expert knowledge of fuzzy controllers is extracted considering the rotation angles and rates of driving wheels as input variables. Fuzzy tuning of the NC results in a superior tracking performance against measurement noises, though the control torques are decreased and smoothed significantly. Second, a complete fuzzy controller (FC) is generated to make perfect tracking of the WMR's position and orientation. The local stability analysis of fuzzy controllers is examined considering the corresponding analytical structures as nonlinear controllers. The superior performances of the proposed fuzzy controllers compared to those of the NCs are evaluated through simulations.     

FUZZY SCHEDULING OF REGIONAL QFT CONTROLLERS

A novel optimization-based controller synthesis method is developed for nonlinear dynamic systems with structured parametric uncertainty. Fuzzy logic is used to smoothly schedule independently designed regional robust controllers over the plant's operational envelope. These linear controllers are synthesized using established conventional control design techniques, e.g., quantitative feedback theory. The resulting full envelope nonlinear dynamic controller handles complex dynamic systems which cannot otherwise be addressed by simple fuzzy logic control (FLC). An analytical representation of the membership functions of FLC allows the optimization to chose the location parameters of the regional controllers. The scheduled controller's valid region of operation is maximized, thus efficiently achieving full envelope operation, while guaranteeing pre-specified tracking performance. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. This paper was produced under the auspices of the US Government and it is therefore not subject to copyright in the US.     

链式系统轨迹跟踪控制:一种新方案

研究了链式系统的轨迹跟踪控制问题,提出了一种新的跟踪方案,设计出能实现全避轨迹跟踪的静态控制器。它克服了用动态反馈线性化方法设计出控制器的两个缺点;控制器维数高和闭环系统有奇异点,将其用于一类轮式机器人的控制中,仿真结果表明了所提出方法的有效性。