Integrated adaptive robust control for multilateral teleoperation systems under arbitrary time delays

With the increasing industrial requirements such as bigger size object, stable operation, and complex task, multilateral teleoperation systems extended from traditional bilateral teleoperation are widely developed. In this paper, the integrated control design is developed for multilateral teleoperation systems, where n master manipulators are operated by human to remotely control n slave manipulators cooperatively handling a target object. For the first time, the control objectives of multilateral teleoperation including stability, synchronization, transparency, and internal force distribution are clarified systematically. A novel communication architecture is proposed to cope with communication delays, where the estimated environmental parameters are transmitted from the slave side to the master, to replace the traditional environmental force measurement in the communication channel. A kind of nonlinear adaptive robust control technique is used to deal with nonlinearities, unknown parameters, and modeling uncertainties existing in the master, slave, and environmental dynamics, so that the excellent tracking performance is achieved in both master and slave sides. The coordinated motion/force control is designed in the slave side by the optimal internal force distribution among n slave manipulators, and the impedance control is designed in the master side to realize the target transparency behavior. In summary, the proposed control algorithm can achieve the guaranteed robust stability, the excellent synchronization and transparency performance, and the optimal internal force distribution simultaneously for multilateral teleoperation systems under arbitrary time delays and various modeling uncertainties. The simulation is carried out on a 2‐master/2‐slave teleoperation system, and the results show the effectiveness of the proposed control design. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Adaptive finite‐time control for bilateral teleoperation systems with jittering time delays

In this paper, we present a robust adaptive control algorithm for a class of bilateral teleoperation systems with system uncertainties and jittering time delays. The remarkable feature of jittering delays is that time delays change sharply and randomly. Conventional controllers would fail because jittering time delays introduce serious chattering. To address the jittering issue, a novel jittering‐free scheme is developed by relaxing and extending the frequently used constant upper bound. Moreover, an adaptive law was incorporated with the Chebyshev neural network to deal with the system uncertainties. To obtain finite‐time synchronization performance, a fast terminal sliding mode controller is proposed through the technique of “adding a power integrator.” With the proposed control scheme, the robust finite‐time convergence performance is guaranteed. The settling time can be further calculated with the controller parameters. The simulation and experiment results have demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed method.     

Adaptive finite‐time control for nonlinear teleoperation systems with asymmetric time‐varying delays

This paper addresses the adaptive finite‐time control problem of nonlinear teleoperation system in the presence of asymmetric time‐varying delays. To achieve the finite‐time position tracking, a novel adaptive finite‐time coordination algorithm based on subsystem decomposition is developed. By introducing a switching‐technique‐based error filtering into our design framework, the complete closed‐loop master (slave) teleoperation system is modeled as a special class of switched system, which is composed of two subsystems. To analyze such system, a finite‐time state‐independent input‐to‐output stability criterion is first developed for some normal switched nonlinear delayed systems. Then based on the classical Lyapunov–Krasovskii method, the stability of complete closed‐loop systems is obtained. It is shown that the proposed scheme can make the position errors converge into a deterministic domain in finite time when the robots continuously contact with human operator and/or the environment in the presence of asymmetric time‐varying delays. Finally, the simulation results are given to demonstrate the effectiveness. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

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.     

Nonlinear adaptive learning control for unknown time‐varying parameters and unknown time‐varying delays

A new adaptive learning control approach is proposed for a class of first‐order nonlinear systems with two unknown time‐varying parameters and an unknown time‐varying delay. By reconstructing the system equation, all unknown time‐varying terms, including the time‐varying delay, are combined into an unknown periodic time‐varying vector, which is estimated by a periodic adaptive mechanism. By constructing a Lyapunov–Krasovskii‐like composite energy function (CEF), we prove the boundedness of all signals and the convergence of the tracking error. The results are extended to two classes of high‐order nonlinear systems with mixed parameters. Three simulation examples are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the control algorithms proposed in this paper. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley and Sons Asia Pte Ltd and Chinese Automatic Control Society     

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.     

Finite‐time adaptive robust control of nonlinear time‐delay uncertain systems with disturbance

This paper investigates finite‐time adaptive robust control problem for a general class of nonlinear time‐delay systems with uncertain and external disturbance via the Lyapunov‐Krasovskii (L‐K) method and presents some delay‐independent and delay‐dependent results on the issue. First, by applying the orthogonal decomposition method, this paper presents an equivalent form. Based on which, we study the finite‐time adaptive robust control problem for the systems by constructing a specific L‐K functional and designing a suitable controller. Different from existing works, this paper studies finite‐time adaptive robust control problem for general nonlinear delay system and presents a delay‐dependent sufficient condition on the problem. Finally, an illustrative example is given to show the effectiveness of the result in this paper.     

遥操作机器人系统带记忆的鲁棒反馈控制

针对遥操作机器人系统的通信通道中存在通信时延，以及机器人模型存在不确定性，可能造成系统不稳定和操作性能降低的问题，提出在环境模型未知的条件下，利用鲁棒控制理论，采用力、位置和速度反馈的控制方法，使得系统稳定，并且具有良好的透明性，控制参数可通过Matlab的LMI工具箱方便地求取，仿真结果表明了该方法的有效性。     

A robust discrete‐time adaptive control approach for systems with almost periodic time‐varying parameters

A periodic adaptive control approach is proposed for a class of nonlinear discrete‐time systems with time‐varying parametric uncertainties which are almost periodic, and the only prior knowledge is the periodicity. The new adaptive controller updates the parameters and the control signal periodically in a pointwise manner over one entire period, in the sequel that achieves a bounded tracking convergence. The result is further extended to scenarios with unknown input gain, higher order dynamics, and tracking. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Indirect adaptive robust control of nonlinear systems with time‐varying parameters in a strict feedback form

Without any prior knowledge of the physical bounds of unknown parameters and uncertain nonlinearities, an indirect adaptive robust controller is constructed for uncertain nonlinear time‐varying systems in a strict‐feedback form. Firstly, an adaptive strong robust controller is derived based on the command filtered adaptive backstepping approach. This controller not only can guarantee the boundedness of the closed‐loop system signals in the presence of time‐varying (TV) parameters and uncertain nonlinearities but also obviate the need to compute analytic derivatives of virtual control functions. Thus, the problem of “explosion of terms” in the standard adaptive backstepping technique is avoided. Through introduction of a simple adaptation law on the upper bound of uncertainties, a smooth robust control term is used to realize the disturbance attenuation. Afterwards, based on the nonlinear X‐swapping techniques, a modular approach in which the controller and the identifier can be designed separately is exploited. A novel algorithm is proposed to estimate the TV parameters accurately. By adopting the variation trend of the covariance matrix as an indicator of the driving signals' persistent excitation level, this online parameter estimation law is switched between a modified least‐squares algorithm and a gradient algorithm based on fixed σ‐modification. Finally, a series of properties on the asymptotic stability and the global uniform ultimate boundedness of the closed‐loop system is established. Simulation results verify the effectiveness of the suggested method.     

Sliding mode adaptive control for a class of nonlinear time‐varying systems

In this work, the problem of designing a control scheme capable of controlling dynamical systems with unknown time‐varying parameters and disturbances is proposed. In contrast with other works, based on two techniques, ie, adaptive backstepping and sliding modes, an improved method that guarantees the output asymptotic tracking of a smooth reference signal, the stability of the closed‐loop system, and the identification errors' boundedness is developed. By means of sliding mode observers, the adaptation errors' required information is extracted and injected to adaptive laws. The behavior of the proposed control scheme is analyzed by the Lyapunov method. The performance of the proposed system is verified with an academic example.     

Tracking for nonlinear plants with multiple unknown time‐varying state delays using sliding mode with adaptation

In this paper, we develop a sliding mode model reference adaptive control (MRAC) scheme for a class of nonlinear dynamic systems with multiple time‐varying state delays, which is robust with respect to unknown plant delays, to a nonlinear perturbation, and to an external disturbance with unknown bounds. An appropriate Lyapunov–Krasovskii‐type functional is introduced to design the adaptation algorithms, and to prove stability. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Robust adaptive control for a class of uncertain strict‐feedback nonlinear systems

In this paper, robust adaptive control is presented for a class of perturbed strict‐feedback nonlinear systems with both completely unknown control coefficients and parametric uncertainties. The proposed design method does not require the a priori knowledge of the signs of the unknown control coefficients. For the first time, the key technical Lemma is proven when the Nussbaum function is chosen by N(ζ)=ζ²cos(ζ), based on which the proposed robust adaptive scheme can guarantee the global uniform ultimate boundedness of the closed‐loop system signals. Simulation results show the validity of the proposed scheme. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Delay‐dependent robust stabilization for uncertain singular systems with multiple time‐varying state delays

In this note, the problem of delay‐dependent robust stabilization for singular systems with multiple time‐varying state delays has been investigated, and the problem is solved via state feedback controller in terms of a linear matrix inequality technique. Numerical examples are given to show the validity of the proposed method. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley and Sons Asia Pte Ltd and Chinese Automatic Control Society     

Global tracking of nonlinear systems with simultaneous unknown time‐varying state and input delays

This paper presents the design of a robust control law for a class of nonlinear dynamical systems subjected to parametric uncertainty and simultaneous unknown, variable state and input delays. A novel controller is developed, which consists of a filtered tracking error and the integral of previous values of control input where the limits of integration are dependent on the known bound of the input delay. Lyapunov‐Krasovskii functionals–based stability analysis guarantees a global uniformly ultimately bounded tracking result where sufficient conditions on controller gains and maximum allowable delay are derived. The performance and robustness of the controller are evaluated by simulation on a two‐link robot manipulator for different combinations of time‐varying state and input delays.     

Robust adaptive fault‐tolerant tracking control of multiple time‐delays systems with mismatched parameter uncertainties and actuator failures

This study deals with the problem of robust adaptive fault‐tolerant tracking for uncertain systems with multiple delayed state perturbations, mismatched parameter uncertainties, external disturbances, and actuator faults including loss of effectiveness, outage, and stuck. It is assumed that the upper bounds of the delayed state perturbations, the external disturbances and the unparameterizable time‐varying stuck faults are unknown. Then, by estimating online such unknown bounds and on the basis of the updated values of these unknown bounds from the adaptive mechanism, a class of memoryless state feedback fault‐tolerant controller with switching signal function is constructed for robust tracking of dynamical signals. Furthermore, by making use of the proposed adaptive robust tracking controller, the tracking error can be guaranteed to be asymptotically zero in spite of multiple delayed state perturbations, mismatched parameter uncertainties, external disturbances, and actuator faults. In addition, it is also proved that the solutions with tracking error of resulting adaptive closed‐loop system are uniformly bounded. Finally, a simulation example for B747‐100/200 aircraft system is provided to illustrate the efficiency of the proposed fault‐tolerant design approach. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Multidimensional Taylor network adaptive control for MIMO time‐varying uncertain nonlinear systems with noises

In this paper, an adaptive control approach based on the multidimensional Taylor network (MTN) is proposed here for the real‐time tracking control of multiple‐input–multiple‐output (MIMO) time‐varying uncertain nonlinear systems with noises. Two MTNs are used to formulate the optimum control and adaptive filtering approaches. The feed‐forward MTN controller (MTNC) is developed to realize the precise tracking control. The closed‐loop errors between the filtered outputs and expected values are directly chosen as the MTNC's inputs. A valid initial value selection scheme for the weights of the MTNC, which can ensure the initial stability of adaptive process, is introduced. The proposed MTNC can update its weights online according to errors caused by system's uncertain factors, based on stable learning rate. The resilient backpropagation algorithm and the adaptive variable step size algorithm via linear reinforcement are utilized to update the MTNC's weights. The MTN filter (MTNF) is developed to eliminate measurement noises and other stochastic factors. The proposed adaptive MTN filtering system possesses the distinctive properties of the Lyapunov theory–based adaptive filtering system and MTN. Lyapunov function of the filtering errors between the measured values and MTNF's outputs is defined. By properly choosing the weights update law in the Lyapunov sense, the MTNF's outputs can asymptotically converge to the desired signals. The design is independent of the stochastic properties of the input disturbances. Simulation of the MTN‐based control is conducted to test the effectiveness of the presented results.     

Robust exponential stability of uncertain stochastic systems with probabilistic time‐varying delays

This paper is concerned with the problem of delay‐distribution–dependent robust exponential stability for uncertain stochastic systems with probabilistic time‐varying delays. Firstly, inspired by a class of networked systems with quantization and packet losses, we study the stabilization problem for a class of network‐based uncertain stochastic systems with probabilistic time‐varying delays. Secondly, an equivalent model of the resulting closed‐loop network‐based uncertain stochastic system is constructed. Different from the previous works, the proposed equivalent system model enables the controller design of the network‐based uncertain stochastic systems to enjoy the advantage of probability distribution characteristic of packet losses. Thirdly, by applying the Lyapunov‐Krasovskii functional approach and the stochastic stability theory, delay‐distribution–dependent robust exponential mean‐square stability criteria are derived, and the sufficient conditions for the design of the delay‐distribution–dependent controller are then proposed to guarantee the stability of the resulting system. Finally, a case study is given to show the effectiveness of the results derived. Moreover, the allowable upper bound of consecutive packet losses will be larger in the case that the probability distribution characteristic of packet losses is taken into consideration.     

Adaptive tracking for MIMO nonlinear systems with Unknown fast time‐varying parameters

In this paper, we consider a class of MIMO nonlinear systems with fast time‐varying parametric uncertainties. First, the tracking problem of general nonlinearly time‐varyingly parameterized systems is solved. Then, a Lyapunov‐based singularity free adaptive controller is proposed for the considered system. Specifically, an estimation approach with a proportional plus integral adaptation scheme is utilized to update the estimations of the unknown parameters under a mild assumption that the signs of the leading minors of the input gain matrix are known. The asymptotic stability is achieved with full state feedback. Furthermore, we design an output feedback controller by utilizing a standard high‐gain observer and achieve uniformly ultimately bounded convergence. Simulation examples illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods.     

Observer‐based adaptive robust control of a class of nonlinear systems with dynamic uncertainties

In this paper, a discontinuous projection‐based adaptive robust control (ARC) scheme is constructed for a class of nonlinear systems in an extended semi‐strict feedback form by incorporating a nonlinear observer and a dynamic normalization signal. The form allows for parametric uncertainties, uncertain nonlinearities, and dynamic uncertainties. The unmeasured states associated with the dynamic uncertainties are assumed to enter the system equations in an affine fashion. A novel nonlinear observer is first constructed to estimate the unmeasured states for a less conservative design. Estimation errors of dynamic uncertainties, as well as other model uncertainties, are dealt with effectively via certain robust feedback control terms for a guaranteed robust performance. In contrast with existing conservative robust adaptive control schemes, the proposed ARC method makes full use of the available structural information on the unmeasured state dynamics and the prior knowledge on the bounds of parameter variations for high performance. The resulting ARC controller achieves a prescribed output tracking transient performance and final tracking accuracy in the sense that the upper bound on the absolute value of the output tracking error over entire time‐history is given and related to certain controller design parameters in a known form. Furthermore, in the absence of uncertain nonlinearities, asymptotic output tracking is also achieved. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.