Nonlinear control with integral sliding properties for circular aerial robot trajectory tracking: Real‐time validation

A nonlinear control algorithm for tracking dynamic trajectories using an aerial vehicle is developed in this work. The control structure is designed using a sliding mode methodology, which contains integral sliding properties. The stability analysis of the closed‐loop system is proved using the Lyapunov formalism, ensuring convergence in a desired finite time and robustness toward unknown and external perturbations from the first time instant, even for high frequency disturbances. In addition, a dynamic trajectory is constructed with the translational dynamics of an aerial robot for autonomous take‐off, surveillance missions, and landing. This trajectory respects the constraints imposed by the vehicle characteristics, allowing free initial trajectory conditions. Simulation results demonstrate the good performance of the controller in closed‐loop system when a quadrotor follows the designed trajectory. In addition, flight tests are developed to validate the trajectory and the controller behavior in real time.     

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.     

Real‐time optimal energy management for a fuel cell/battery hybrid system

An energy management strategy is proposed for a class of fuel cell/battery hybrid systems. In such hybrid systems, a fuel cell system is the main power source, and a lithium‐ion battery is the auxiliary power source. In order to manage the system power at the next moment in a reasonable way, a load current filter with bounded estimation errors is designed to estimate the load current. Then, a real‐time optimal energy management algorithm is proposed to optimize economy consumption of the hybrid system. By taking current change rate of the fuel cell and the state of charge into consideration and taking reasonable model simplifications, the optimization problem can be described as a quadratic programming problem. Then a general purpose solver is proposed to solve the quadratic programming problem based on the alternating direction method of multipliers. The efficiency of the proposed solver is much faster than computing interior point method or active set method. Simulation results in MATLAB/SIMULINK are carried out to validate the significant effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed management strategy.     

Robust adaptive backstepping sliding mode control for motion mode decoupling of two‐axle vehicles with active kinetic dynamic suspension systems

A mode decoupling control strategy is proposed for the active Kinetic Dynamic Suspension Systems (KDSS) with electrohydrostatic actuator (EHA) to improve the roll and warp mode performances. A matrix transfer method is employed to derive the modes of body and wheel station motions for full vehicle with active KDSS. The additional mode stiffness produced by the active KDSS is obtained and quantitatively described with the typical physical parameters. A new hierarchical feedback control strategy is proposed for the active KDSS to improve the roll and warp motion performances and simultaneously accounting for nonlinear dynamics of the actuators with hydraulic uncertainties. H∞ static output‐feedback control is employed to obtain the desirable mode forces, and a new projection‐based adaptive backstepping sliding mode tracking controller is designed for EHA to deal with address the nonlinearity and parameters uncertainty. This controller is used to realize the desirable pressure difference of EHA required from the target mode forces. Numerical simulations are presented to compare the roll and warp performances between the active KDSS, conventional spring‐damper suspension, and suspension with antiroll bar under typical excitation conditions. The evaluation indices are normalized and compared with radar chart. The obtained results illustrate that the proposed active KDSS with proposed controller does not produce additional warp motion for vehicle body, and has achieved more reasonable tire force distribution among wheel stations, the roll stability, road holding, and significantly improved ride comfort simultaneously.     

Dual‐rate sampled‐data stabilization for active suspension system of electric vehicle

In this paper, we consider the dual‐rate sampled‐data state‐feedback control problem for an active suspension system of an electric vehicle. In the active suspension system, there exist 2 accelerometers to measure the heave acceleration of the sprung mass and the vertical acceleration of the unsprung mass, respectively. When the 2 accelerations are measured by sampled data under different sampling periods, the difficulty arising from the dual‐rate sampled data makes the active suspension stabilization problem challenging but interesting. In this paper, a linear hybrid stabilizer is proposed, which is implemented using dual‐rate sampled‐data state feedback. In order to deal with the more difficult stabilization problem under different triggering time instants, a coordinate transformation is proposed. A useful technical theorem is proposed in the stability analysis to show that the proposed hybrid controller can guarantee the states of the active suspension system being asymptotically stabilized or at least bounded to arbitrarily small domains. The experiment result is similar to the simulation result and indicates that the proposed active suspension controlling system is effective.     

Closed‐loop input shaping control of vibration in flexible structures using discrete‐time sliding mode

Input shaping technique is widely used in reducing or eliminating residual vibration of flexible structures. It is easy to implement and achieve the exact elimination of the residual vibration if the dynamics of the system are known accurately. However, it is not very robust to parameter uncertainties and external disturbances. In this paper, a closed‐loop input shaping method is developed for reducing or eliminating residual vibration of flexible structure systems with parameter uncertainties and external disturbances. The algorithm is based on input shaping control and discrete‐time sliding mode control. It is shown that the proposed scheme guarantees closed‐loop system stability, and yields good performance and robustness in the presence of parameter uncertainties and external disturbances as well. The selection of switching surface and the existence of sliding mode are two important issues, which have been addressed. The knowledge of upper bound of uncertainties is not required. Furthermore, it is shown that increasing the robustness to parameter uncertainties does not lengthen the duration of the impulse sequence. Simulation results demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed closed‐loop input shaping control scheme. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Multi‐surface sliding control for fast finite‐time leader–follower consensus with high order SISO uncertain nonlinear agents

In this paper, multi surface sliding cooperative control scheme is presented and new multiple sliding surfaces are proposed. It is proven that, for the setup that each agent is described by a chain of integrators, where the last integrator is perturbed by a bounded disturbance, leader–follower consensus can be achieved on these sliding surfaces if the communication graph has a directed spanning tree. Also, sliding variables can be driven to the sliding surfaces in fast finite time by the nonsmooth control law. The fast finite‐time Lyapunov stability theorem, the terminal sliding control technique, and the adding a power integrator design approach are used in our proposed control. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Real‐time multi‐spectral image fusion

This paper describes a novel real‐time multi‐spectral imaging capability for surveillance applications. The capability combines a new high‐performance multi‐spectral camera system with a distributed algorithm that computes a spectral‐screening principal component transform (PCT). The camera system uses a novel filter wheel design together with a high‐bandwidth CCD camera to allow image cubes to be delivered at 110 frames s with a spectral coverage between 400 and 1000 nm. The filters used in a particular application are selected to highlight a particular object based on its spectral signature. The distributed algorithm allows image streams from a dispersed collection of cameras to be disseminated, viewed, and interpreted by a distributed group of analysts in real‐time. It operates on networks of commercial‐off‐the‐shelf multiprocessors connected with high‐performance (e.g. gigabit) networking, taking advantage of multi‐threading where appropriate. The algorithm uses a concurrent formulation of the PCT to de‐correlate and compress a multi‐spectral image cube. Spectral screening is used to give features that occur infrequently (e.g. mechanized vehicles in a forest) equal importance to those that occur frequently (e.g. trees in the forest). A human‐centered color‐mapping scheme is used to maximize the impact of spectral contrast on the human visual system. To demonstrate the efficacy of the multi‐spectral system, plant‐life scenes with both real and artificial foliage are used. These scenes demonstrate the systems ability to distinguish elements of a scene that cannot be distinguished with the naked eye. The capability is evaluated in terms of visual performance, scalability, and real‐time throughput. Our previous work on predictive analytical modeling is extended to answer practical design questions such as ‘For a specified cost, what system can be constructed and what performance will it attain?’ Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Discrete‐time higher‐order sliding mode control of systems with unmatched uncertainty

The research on discrete‐time higher‐order sliding mode has received a considerable attention recently. Systems with unmatched uncertainties are common in practice; however, the existing discrete‐time higher‐order sliding mode control algorithms are designed considering only matched uncertainty. This paper proposes a technique to design discrete‐time higher‐order sliding mode control for an uncertain LTI system in the presence of unmatched uncertainty. The proposed technique is numerically simulated and experimentally validated on an electromechanical rectilinear plant. Various experiments are conducted considering the several operational conditions of electromechanical systems in industries to verify the performance of the proposed controller.     

Fixed‐time sliding mode cooperative control for multiagent networks via event‐triggered strategy

In this article, the problem of event‐triggered‐based fixed‐time sliding mode cooperative control is addressed for a class of leader‐follower multiagent networks with bounded perturbation. First, a terminal integral sliding mode manifold with fast convergent speed is designed. Then, a distributed consensus tracking control strategy based on event‐triggered and sliding mode control is developed that guarantees the multiagent networks achieve consensus within a fixed time which is independent of initial states of agents in comparison with the finite‐time convergence. Furthermore, the update frequency of control law can be considerably reduced and Zeno behavior can be removed by utilizing the proposed event‐triggered control algorithm. Simulation examples are used to show the effectiveness of the new control protocol.     

Analysis and design of chattering‐free discrete‐time sliding mode control

In this paper, the disturbance observer–based chattering‐free discrete‐time sliding mode control (DSMC) approach is proposed for systems with external disturbances. The proposed disturbance observer, which makes full use of the state and input information at the current and last steps, improves the estimation accuracy and achieves accurate compensation for disturbances. Then, with the help of disturbance observer, a new reaching law, which contains not only a nonsmooth term with a dynamically adjusted gain parameter but also a second order difference of the disturbance, is proposed to reduce the range of the quasi‐sliding mode band and eliminate chattering. The proposed DSMC approach realizes the active disturbance rejection and strong robustness. Finally, a simulation example is presented to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.     

Real‐time haptic manipulation and cutting of hybrid soft tissue models by extended position‐based dynamics

This paper systematically describes an interactive dissection approach for hybrid soft tissue models governed by extended position‐based dynamics. Our framework makes use of a hybrid geometric model comprising both surface and volumetric meshes. The fine surface triangular mesh with high‐precision geometric structure and texture at the detailed level is employed to represent the exterior structure of soft tissue models. Meanwhile, the interior structure of soft tissues is constructed by coarser tetrahedral mesh, which is also employed as physical model participating in dynamic simulation. The less details of interior structure can effectively reduce the computational cost during simulation. For physical deformation, we design and implement an extended position‐based dynamics approach that supports topology modification and material heterogeneities of soft tissue. Besides stretching and volume conservation constraints, it enforces the energy preserving constraints, which take the different spring stiffness of material into account and improve the visual performance of soft tissue deformation. Furthermore, we develop mechanical modeling of dissection behavior and analyze the system stability. The experimental results have shown that our approach affords real‐time and robust cutting without sacrificing realistic visual performance. Our novel dissection technique has already been integrated into a virtual reality‐based laparoscopic surgery simulator. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

具有输入时滞的主动悬挂系统的减振控制

研宄具有输入时滞的汽车主动悬挂系统在路面扰动下的减振控制器设计问题.首先根据汽车悬挂系统的特点,从实用性的角度出发化简了悬挂系统的数学模型.然后提出一种变量代换方法,将具有输入时滞的主动悬挂系统转换为形式上不含时滞的系统.针对转换后的无时滞系统,设计出具有输入时滞的主动悬挂系统减振控制器:又从控制器的成本和易实现性出发添加了一个状态观测器.在这种系统结构下,设计出一种具有记忆和积分特性的主动悬挂系统减振控制策略.仿真结果验证了这种设计控制器的方法是有效的.     

Composite stratified anti‐disturbance control for a class of MIMO discrete‐time systems with nonlinearity

Anti‐disturbance control and estimation problem are investigated for nonlinear system subject to multi‐source disturbances. The disturbances classified model is proposed based on the error and noise analysis of priori knowledge. The disturbance observers are constructed separately from the controller design to estimate the disturbance with partial known information. By integrating disturbance‐observer‐based control with discrete‐time sliding‐mode control (DSMC), a novel type of composite stratified anti‐disturbance control scheme is presented for a class of multiple‐input–multiple‐output discrete‐time systems with known and unknown nonlinear dynamics, respectively. Simulations for a flight control system are given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the results compared with the previous schemes. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Adaptive sliding‐mode control for Mars entry trajectory tracking with finite‐time convergence

This paper presents a novel adaptive sliding‐mode control (ASMC) method for Mars entry guidance and the finite‐time convergence in the presence of large uncertainties can be guaranteed. With the help of gain adaptive law, the nonoverestimating value of control gains can be achieved, and then, the chattering can be attenuated by the proposed ASMC method. Meanwhile, the extended state observer is introduced to estimate and compensate for uncertainties and the nonoverestimating problem is resolved further. In addition, the proposed method does not require any knowledge on the upper bound of uncertainty, which yields to be used in practical systems. Finally, the numerical simulation results are given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed guidance law.     

Real‐time screen‐space liquid rendering with complex refractions

Particle‐based liquid is often rendered only with single refraction in real‐time applications, which deteriorates the reality of liquid. We present a screen‐space method for rendering particle‐based liquids with up to four refractions in real time. Our method separates liquid particles into splashes and aggregations (i.e., liquid bodies) and generates a pair of depth maps of front‐facing and back‐facing surfaces for each. We use the depth maps of splashes as they are but smooth those of aggregations to reduce small bumps. For smoothing depth, we iteratively fit planes locally using moving least squares, unlike previous filtering‐based approaches that cause undesirable refractions around depth boundaries. By calculating refractions with physically based light attenuation, our method can render liquids more realistically than previous methods. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Reaction wheel fault‐tolerant finite‐time control for spacecraft attitude tracking without unwinding

This article proposes fault‐tolerant finite‐time attitude tracking control of a rigid spacecraft actuated by four reaction wheels without unwinding problem in the presence of external disturbances, uncertain inertia parameter, and actuator faults. First, a novel antiunwinding finite‐time attitude tracking control law is derived with a designed control signal which works within a known actuator‐magnitude constraint using a continuous nonsingular fast terminal sliding mode (NFTSM) concept. Second, a finite‐time disturbance observer (FTDO) is introduced to estimate a lumped disturbance due to external disturbances, uncertain inertia parameter, actuator faults, and input saturation. Third, a composite controller is developed which consists of a feedback control based on the continuous NFTSM method and compensation term based on the FTDO. The global finite‐time stability is proved using Lyapunov stability theory. Moreover, the singularity and unwinding phenomenon are avoided. Simulation results are conducted under actuator constraints in the presence of external disturbances, inertia uncertainty, and actuator faults and results are illustrated to show the effectiveness of the proposed method. In addition, to show the superiority of the proposed control method over the recently reported control methods, comparative analysis is also presented.     

Real‐time generation of smoothed‐particle hydrodynamics‐based special effects in character animation

In the previous works, the real‐time fluid‐character animation could hardly be achieved because of the intensive processing demand on the character's movement and fluid simulation. This paper presents an effective approach to the real‐time generation of the fluid flow driven by the motion of a character in full 3D space, based on smoothed‐particle hydrodynamics method. The novel method of conducting and constraining the fluid particles by the geometric properties of the character motion trajectory is introduced. Furthermore, the optimized algorithms of particle searching and rendering are proposed, by taking advantage of the graphics processing unit parallelization. Consequently, both simulation and rendering of the 3D liquid effects with realistic character interactions can be implemented by our framework and performed in real‐time on a conventional PC. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Robust adaptive finite‐time parameter estimation and control for robotic systems

This paper studies adaptive parameter estimation and control for nonlinear robotic systems based on parameter estimation errors. A framework to obtain an expression of the parameter estimation error is proposed first by introducing a set of auxiliary filtered variables. Then three novel adaptive laws driven by the estimation error are presented, where exponential error convergence is proved under the conventional persistent excitation (PE) condition; the direct measurement of the time derivatives of the system states are avoided. The adaptive laws are modified via a sliding mode technique to achieve finite‐time convergence, and an online verification of the alternative PE condition is introduced. Leakage terms, functions of the estimation error, are incorporated into the adaptation laws to avoid windup of the adaptation algorithms. The adaptive algorithm applied to robotic systems permits that tracking control and exact parameter estimation are achieved simultaneously in finite time using a terminal sliding mode (TSM) control law. In this case, the PE condition can be replaced with a sufficient richness requirement of the command signals and thus is verifiable a priori. The potential singularity problem encountered in TSM controls is remedied by introducing a two‐phase control procedure. The robustness of the proposed methods against disturbances is investigated. Simulations based on the ‘Bristol‐Elumotion‐Robotic‐Torso II’ (BERT II) are provided to validate the efficacy of the introduced methods. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Design of a two‐level controller for an active suspension system

The paper focuses on a control design for a vehicle suspension system in which a balance between different performance demands is achieved. The starting point of the control design is a full–car model which contains nonlinear components, i.e. the dynamics of the dampers and springs and nonlinear actuator dynamics. In order to handle the high complexity of the problem this paper proposes the design of a two‐level controller of an active suspension system. The required control force is computed by applying a high‐level controller, which is designed using a linear parameter varying (LPV) method. For the control design the model is augmented with weighting functions specified by the performance demands and the uncertainty assumptions. The actuator generating the necessary control force is modelled as a nonlinear system for which a low‐level force‐tracking controller is designed. To obtain the low‐level controller a backstepping method is proposed. As an alternative solution a feedback linearization method is also presented. The operation of the controller is illustrated through simulation examples. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley and Sons Asia Pte Ltd and Chinese Automatic Control Society