Robust adaptive fault‐tolerant tracking control for uncertain linear systems with time‐varying performance bounds

In this paper, the problem of robust adaptive fault‐tolerant tracking control with time‐varying performance bounds is investigated for a class of linear systems subject to parameter uncertainties, external disturbances and actuator failures. In order to ensure the norm of the tracking error less than the user‐defined time‐varying performance bounds, we propose a new control strategy which is predicated on the generalized restricted potential function. Compared with the existing result, a novel method which provides two design freedoms is developed to reduce the tracking error. According to the online estimation information provided by adaptive mechanism, a fault‐tolerant tracking control method guaranteeing time‐varying performance bounds is developed for robust tracking of reference model. It is shown that the closed‐loop signals are bounded and the tracking error within an a priori given, time‐varying performance bounds. A simulation result is provided to demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed fault‐tolerant tracking control method.     

Adaptive fault‐tolerant time‐varying formation tracking for multiagent systems with multiple leaders

In this paper, an adaptive fault‐tolerant time‐varying formation control problem for nonlinear multiagent systems with multiple leaders is studied against actuator faults and state‐dependent uncertainties. Simultaneously, the followers form a predefined formation while tracking reference signal determined by the convex combination of the multiple leaders. Based on the neighboring relative information, an adaptive fault‐tolerant formation time‐varying control protocol is constructed to compensate for the influences of actuator faults and model uncertainties. In addition, the updating laws can be adjusted online through the adaptive mechanism, and the proposed control protocol can guarantee that all the signals in the closed‐loop systems are bounded. Lyapunov‐like functions are addressed to prove the stability of multiagent systems. Finally, two examples are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the theoretical results.     

Delay‐dependent fault‐tolerant controller for time‐delay systems with randomly occurring uncertainties

This paper addresses the passivity‐based control problem for a class of time‐varying delay systems subject to nonlinear actuator faults and randomly occurring uncertainties via fault‐tolerant controller. More precisely, the uncertainties are described in terms of stochastic variables, which satisfies Bernoulli distribution, and the existence of actuator faults are assumed not only linear but also nonlinear, which is a more general one. The main objective of this paper is to design a state feedback‐reliable controller such that the resulting closed‐loop time‐delay system is stochastically stable under a prescribed mixed and passivity performance level γ>0 in the presence of all admissible uncertainties and actuator faults. Based on Lyapunov stability method and some integral inequality techniques, a new set of sufficient conditions is obtained in terms of linear matrix inequality (LMI) constraints to ensure the asymptotic stability of the considered system. Moreover, the control design parameters can be computed by solving a set of LMI constraints. Finally, two examples including a quarter‐car model are provided to show the efficiency and usefulness of the proposed control scheme. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Supervisory adaptive fault‐tolerant control against actuator failures with application to an aircraft

In this paper, a supervisory adaptive fault‐tolerant control scheme is proposed for a class of uncertain nonlinear systems with multiple inputs. The multiple inputs are the outputs of an actuator group that may act either on one control surface or on multiple control surfaces and may fail during operation. With some actuator groups as backups, the supervisory adaptive control includes 2 modes: the adaptive compensation mode and the switching mode. The former is used to compensate for the failure of an actuator group as long as at least one actuator of the group works normally, and the latter, to switch the controller from a failed group to a healthy one when the failure is detected by one of the monitoring functions that are constructed to supervise some variables related to system stability. It is shown that with the proposed scheme, all signals of the closed‐loop system are bounded, and prescribed transient and steady state performance of the tracking error can be guaranteed. An aircraft example is used to demonstrate the application of the proposed scheme.     

Recursive filtering adaptive fault‐tolerant tracking control for uncertain switched multivariable nonlinear systems

This article synthesizes a recursive filtering adaptive fault‐tolerant tracking control method for uncertain switched multivariable nonlinear systems. The multivariable nonlinear systems under consideration have both matched and mismatched uncertainties, which satisfy the semiglobal Lipschitz condition. A piecewise constant adaptive law generates adaptive parameters by solving the error dynamics with the neglection of unknowns, and the recursive least squares is employed to minimize the residual error by categorizing the total uncertainty estimates into matched and mismatched components. A filtering control law is designed to compensate the actuator faults and nonlinear uncertainties such that a good tracking performance is delivered with guaranteed robustness. The matched component is canceled directly by adopting their opposite in the control signal, whereas a dynamic inversion of the system is performed to eliminate the effect of the mismatched component on the output. By exploiting the average dwell time principle, the error bounds are derived for the states and control inputs compared with the virtual reference system which defines the best performance that can be achieved by the closed‐loop system. Both numerical and practical examples are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed switching recursive filtering adaptive fault‐tolerant tracking control architecture, comparisons with model reference adaptive control are also carried out.     

A stability guaranteed active fault‐tolerant control system against actuator failures

In this paper, a new strategy for fault‐tolerant control system design has been proposed using multiple controllers. The design of such controllers is shown to be unique in the sense that the resulting control system neither suffers from the problem of conservativeness of conventional passive fault‐tolerant control nor from the risk of instability associated with active fault‐tolerant control in case that an incorrect fault detection and isolation decision is made. In other words, the stability of the closed‐loop system is always ensured regardless of the decision made by the fault detection and isolation scheme. A correct decision will further lead to optimal performance of the closed‐loop system. This paper deals with the conflicting requirements among stability, redundancy, and graceful degradation in performance for fault‐tolerant control systems by using robust control techniques. A detailed design procedure has been presented with consideration of parameter uncertainties. Both total and partial actuator failures have been considered. This new control strategy has been demonstrated by controlling a McDonnell F‐4C airplane in the lateral‐direction through simulation. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Robust adaptive fault‐tolerant quantized control of nonlinear systems with constraints on system behaviors and states

In this work, we develop a robust adaptive fault‐tolerant tracking control scheme for a class of input‐quantized strict‐feedback nonlinear systems in the presence of error/state constraints and actuation faults. The problem is rather complicated yet challenging if nonparametric uncertainties and unknown quantization parameters as well as time‐varying yet completely undetectable actuation faults are involved in the considered systems. Compared with the most existing approaches in the literature, the proposed control exhibits several attractive advantages: (1) upon using a nonlinear decomposition for quantized input and employing the robust technique for actuation fault, not only the exact knowledge of quantization parameters are not required, but also the actuation fault can be easily compensated since neither fault detection and diagnosis/fault detection and identification nor controller reconfiguration is needed; (2) based on the error/state‐dependent unified nonlinear function, the constraints on tracking error and system states are directly handled and the cases with or without constraints can also be addressed in a unified manner without changing the control structure; and (3) the utilization of unified nonlinear function‐based dynamic surface control not only avoids the problem of the explosion of complexity in traditional backstepping design, but also bypasses the demanding feasibility conditions of virtual controllers. Furthermore, by using the Lyapunov analysis, it is ensured that all signals in the closed‐loop systems are uniformly ultimately bounded. The effectiveness of the developed control algorithm is confirmed by numerical simulations.     

Adaptive fault‐tolerant formation control for quadrotors with actuator faults

In this paper, we investigate the fault‐tolerant formation control of a group of quadrotor aircrafts with a leader. Continuous fault‐tolerant formation control protocol is constructed by using adaptive updating mechanism and boundary layer theory to compensate actuator fault. Results show that the desired formation pattern and trajectory under actuator fault can be achieved using the proposed fault‐tolerant formation control. A simulation is conducted to illustrate the effectiveness of the method.     

BIBO stability and stabilization of networked control systems with short time‐varying delays

This paper presents a robust control approach to solve the stability and stabilization problems for networked control systems (NCSs) with short time‐varying delays. A new discrete‐time linear uncertain system model is proposed to describe the NCS, and the uncertainty of the network‐induced delay is transformed into the uncertainty of the system matrix. Based on the obtained uncertain system model, a sufficient BIBO stability condition for the closed‐loop NCS is derived by applying the small gain theorem. The obtained stability condition establishes a quantitative relation between the BIBO stability of the closed‐loop NCS and two delay parameters, namely, the delay upper bound and the delay variation range bound. Moreover, design procedures for the state feedback stabilizing controllers are also presented. An illustrative example is provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Robust adaptive fault‐tolerant control of uncertain linear systems via sliding‐mode output feedback

This paper is concerned with the robust adaptive fault‐tolerant compensation control problem via sliding‐mode output feedback for uncertain linear systems with actuator faults and exogenous disturbances. Mismatched disturbance attenuation is performed via H_∞ norm minimization. By incorporating the matrix full‐rank factorization technique with sliding surface design successfully, the total failure of certain actuators can be coped with, under the assumption that redundancy is available in the system. Without the need for a fault detection and isolation mechanism, an adaptive sliding mode controller, where the gain of the nonlinear unit vector term is updated automatically to compensate the effects of actuator faults, is designed to guarantee the asymptotic stability and adaptive H_∞ performance of closed‐loop systems. The effectiveness of the proposed design method is illustrated via a B747‐100/200 aircraft model. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Global adaptive stabilization for high‐order uncertain time‐varying nonlinear systems with time‐delays

This paper focuses on the adaptive stabilization problem for a class of high‐order nonlinear systems with time‐varying uncertainties and unknown time‐delays. Time‐varying uncertain parameters are compensated by combining a function gain with traditional adaptive technique, and unknown multiple time‐delays are manipulated by the delicate choice of an appropriate Lyapunov function. With the help of homogeneous domination idea and recursive design, a continuous adaptive state‐feedback controller is designed to guarantee that resulting closed‐loop systems are globally uniformly stable and original system states converge to zero. The effectiveness of the proposed control scheme is illustrated by the stabilization of delayed neural network systems. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Robust adaptive tracking control of distributed delay systems with actuator and communication failures

This paper is concerned with the robust adaptive fault‐tolerant tracking control problem for a class of distributed delay systems against faulted and perturbed actuators and communications. As all the faults on actuators and communications, network delays in control and communication channels, and perturbations in communications and exogenous disturbances are unknown, some adaptation schemes are developed to adjust controller parameters in real‐time for constructing a class of distributed compensation controllers based on the delayed signals. Then, according to the information from the adaptive mechanism, the effect of each actuator and communication fault, network delay, channel perturbation and exogenous disturbance can be eliminated completely by using the proposed distributed adaptive‐state feedback controllers. Furthermore, asymptotic tracking results of the distributed closed‐loop systems can be achieved based on Lyapunov stability theory. An example is provided to further illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed direct adaptive design technique. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley and Sons Asia Pte Ltd and Chinese Automatic Control Society     

Elegant antidisturbance fault‐tolerant control for stochastic systems with multiple heterogeneous disturbances

In this article, the elegant antidisturbance fault‐tolerant control (EADFTC) problem is studied for a class of stochastic systems in the simultaneous presence of multiple heterogeneous disturbances and time‐varying faults. The multiple heterogeneous disturbances include white noise, norm bounded uncertain disturbances and uncertain modeled disturbances with multiple nonlinearities and unknown amplitudes, frequencies, and phases. The time‐varying fault signals are caused by lose efficacy of actuator. To online estimate uncertain modeled disturbances and time‐varying faults, a novel composite observer structure consisting of the adaptive nonlinear disturbance observer and the fault diagnosis observer is constructed. The novel EADFTC strategy is proposed by integrating composite observer structure with adaptive disturbance observer‐based control theory and H_∞ technology. It is proved that all the signals of closed‐loop system are asymptotically bounded in mean square under the circumstances of multiple heterogeneous disturbances and time‐varying faults occur simultaneously. Finally, the effectiveness and availability of proposed strategy are demonstrated by means of the numerical simulation and a doubly fed induction generators system simulation, respectively.     

A novel adaptive robust control architecture for bilateral teleoperation systems under time‐varying delays

Bilateral teleoperation technology has caused wide attentions due to its applications in various remote operation systems. The communication delay becomes one of the main challenging issues in the teleoperation control design. Meanwhile, various nonlinearities, parameter variations, and modeling uncertainties existing in manipulator and environment dynamics need to be considered carefully in order to achieve good control performance. In this paper, a globally stable nonlinear adaptive robust control algorithm is developed for bilateral teleoperation systems to deal with these control issues. Namely, the unknown dynamical parameters of the environmental force are estimated online by the improved least square adaptation law. A novel communication structure is proposed where only the master position signal is transmitted to the slave side for the tracking design, and the online estimators of the environmental parameters are transmitted from the slave to the master to replace the traditional environmental force measurement. Because the estimated environmental parameters are not power signals, the passivity problem of the communication channel and the trade‐off limitation between the transparency performance and robust stability in traditional teleoperation control are essentially avoided. The nonlinear adaptive robust control is subsequently developed to deal with nonlinearities, unknown parameters, and modeling uncertainties of the master, slave, and environmental dynamics, so that the guaranteed transient and steady‐state transparency performance can be achieved. The experiments on two voice‐coil motor‐driven manipulators are carried out, and the comparative results verify that the proposed control algorithm achieves the excellent control performance and the guaranteed robust stability simultaneously under time delays. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Robust flow control in data‐communication networks with multiple time‐delays

Robust controller design for a flow control problem where uncertain multiple time‐varying time‐delays exist is considered. Although primarily data‐communication networks are considered, the presented approach can also be applied to other flow control problems and can even be extended to other control problems where uncertain multiple time‐varying time‐delays exist. Besides robustness, tracking and fairness requirements are also considered. To solve this problem, an ??^∞ optimization problem is set up and solved. Unlike previous approaches, where only a suboptimal solution could be found, the present approach allows to design an optimal controller. Simulation studies are carried out in order to illustrate the time‐domain performance of the designed controllers. The obtained results are also compared to the results of a suboptimal controller obtained by an earlier approach. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Distributed adaptive fault‐tolerant leader‐following formation control of nonlinear uncertain second‐order multi‐agent systems

This paper presents a distributed integrated fault diagnosis and accommodation scheme for leader‐following formation control of a class of nonlinear uncertain second‐order multi‐agent systems. The fault model under consideration includes both process and actuator faults, which may evolve abruptly or incipiently. The time‐varying leader communicates with a small subset of follower agents, and each follower agent communicates to its directly connected neighbors through a bidirectional network with possibly asymmetric weights. A local fault diagnosis and accommodation component are designed for each agent in the distributed system, which consists of a fault detection and isolation module and a reconfigurable controller module comprised of a baseline controller and two adaptive fault‐tolerant controllers, activated after fault detection and after fault isolation, respectively. By using appropriately the designed Lyapunov functions, the closed‐loop stability and asymptotic convergence properties of the leader‐follower formation are rigorously established under different modes of the fault‐tolerant control system.     

Adaptive decentralized fault‐tolerant tracking control for large‐scale nonlinear systems with input quantization

In this paper, an adaptive decentralized tracking control scheme is designed for large‐scale nonlinear systems with input quantization, actuator faults, and external disturbance. The nonlinearities, time‐varying actuator faults, and disturbance are assumed to exist unknown upper and lower bounds. Then, an adaptive decentralized fault‐tolerant tracking control method is designed without using backstepping technique and neural networks. In the proposed control scheme, adaptive mechanisms are used to compensate the effects of unknown nonlinearities, input quantization, actuator faults, and disturbance. The designed adaptive control strategy can guarantee that all the signals of each subsystem are bounded and the tracking errors of all subsystems converge asymptotically to zero. Finally, simulation results are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the designed approach.     

Adaptive fault‐tolerant control for feedback linearizable systems with an aircraft application

This paper investigates fault‐tolerant control (FTC) for feedback linearizable systems (FLSs) and its applications. The dynamic effects caused by the actuator faults on the feedback linearized model are firstly analyzed, which reveals that under actuator faults, the control input in the linearized model is affected by uncertain terms. In the framework of model reference control, the first FTC strategy is proposed as a robust controller, which achieves asymptotic tracking control of the FLS under actuator faults. A disadvantage of this strategy is that it relies on explicit information about several parameters in the actuator faults. This requirement is later relaxed by combining the robust FTC strategy with an adaptive technique to generate the adaptive FTC law, which is then improved to alleviate possible chattering of the actuator and estimation drifting of the adaptive parameter. Finally, the proposed FTC strategies are evaluated by reference command tracking control of a pendulum and an air‐breathing hypersonic vehicle under actuator faults. Simulation results demonstrate good tracking performance, which confirms effectiveness of the proposed strategies. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Robust adaptive neural tracking control for a class of electrically driven robots with time delays

This article addresses the problem of designing the robust tracking control for a class of uncertain electrically driven robots with time delays. The unknown time-delay uncertainty is assumed to be bounded by a function of all the state variables. By suitably choosing the Lyapunov–Krasovskii functionals, a novel adaptive/robust neural tracking control scheme is developed for the first time such that all the states and signals of the closed-loop time-delay robot system are bounded and the tracking error is shown to be uniformly ultimately bounded. By suitably designing the embedded current signal, the effect of time-delay uncertainty in the mechanical dynamics does not require to be incorporated into the current tracking error dynamics, and so the Lyapunov–Krasovskii functionals can be easily constructed in the stability analysis. Compared with the previous investigations of controlling robots the control scheme developed here can be extended to handle a broader class of electrically driven robots perturbed simultaneously by plant uncertainties, time-varying perturbations, and time-delay uncertainties. Finally, simulation examples are made to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control algorithm.