Synthesis of a system of automatic calculation of program signals for controlling motion of an underwater vehicle along a complex spatial trajectory

A new approach to accurate motion control of underwater vehicles is suggested. It consists in automatic calculation of program signals allowing the vehicle moving with variable speed along a spatial trajectory to pass separate trajectory segments as fast as possible. The desired speed of the underwater vehicle is calculated based on the maximum admissible deviation from the given trajectory and the norm of the dynamic error vector. Results of mathematical simulation substantiated workability and high efficiency of the proposed approach and the synthesized system of automatic calculation of program signals of accurate spatial motion of the underwater vehicle.     

Investigations on the Hybrid Tracking Control of an Underactuated Autonomous Underwater Robot

The problem of trajectory tracking control of an underactuated autonomous underwater robot (AUR) in a three-dimensional (3-D) space is investigated in this paper. The control of an underactuated robot is different from fully actuated robots in many aspects. In particular, these robot systems do not satisfy Brockett's necessary condition for feedback stabilization and no continuous time-invariant state feedback control law exists that makes a specified equilibrium of the closed-loop system asymptotically stable. The uncertainty of hydrodynamic parameters, along with the coupled, nonlinear dynamics of the underwater robot, also makes the navigation and tracking control a difficult task. The proposed hybrid control law is developed by combining sliding mode control (SMC) and classical proportional–integral–derivative (PID) control methods to reduce the tracking errors arising out of disturbances, as well as variations in vehicle parameters like buoyancy. Here, a trajectory planner computes the body-fixed linear and angular velocities, as well as vehicle orientations corresponding to a given 3-D inertial trajectory, which yields a feasible 6-d.o.f. trajectory. This trajectory is used to compute the control signals for the three available controllable inputs by the hybrid controller. A supervisory controller is used to switch between the SMC and PID control as per a predefined switching law. The switching function parameters are optimized using Taguchi design techniques. The effectiveness and performance of the proposed controller is investigated by comparing numerically with classical SMC and traditional linear control systems in the presence of disturbances. Numerical simulations using the full set of nonlinear equations of motion show that the controller does quite well in dealing with the plant nonlinearity and parameter uncertainties for trajectory tracking. The proposed controller response shows less tracking error without the usually present control chattering. Some practical features of this control law are also discussed.     

Enhanced adaptive motion tracking control of piezo-actuated flexure-based four-bar mechanisms for micro/nano manipulation

This paper establishes and investigates an enhanced adaptive motion tracking control methodology for piezo-actuated flexure-based four-bar micro/nano manipulation mechanisms. This control methodology is proposed for tracking desired motion trajectories in the presence of unknown or uncertain system parameters, non-linearities including the hysteresis effect, and external disturbances in the motion systems. In this paper, the equations for the modelling of a flexure-hinged four-bar micro/nano mechanism are established. These include the angular stiffness, ‘static’ linear stiffness, equation of motion, and lowest structural resonance of the mechanism. In addition, a lumped parameter dynamic model that combines the piezoelectric actuator and the micro/nano mechanism is established for the formulation of the proposed control methodology. The stability of the control approach is analysed, and the convergence of the position and velocity tracking errors to zero is proven theoretically. A precise tracking performance in following a desired motion trajectory is also demonstrated in the experimental study. An important advantage of this control methodology is that the approach requires only a knowledge of the estimated lumped system parameters in the physical realisation. This proposed motion tracking control methodology is very attractive for the implementation of high performance flexure-based micro/nano manipulation control applications.     

Trajectory control of a high altitude hypervelocity flying vehicle in the midcourse active phase of the flight

An approach to the control of the motion of the center of mass of a high altitude hypervelocity flying vehicle whose engine thrust and aerodynamics strongly depend on the angle of attack in the midcourse active phase of the flight is proposed. This approach provides a basis for the method of the trajectory control of motion. The motion of this flying vehicle is simulated with regard to the disturbed atmosphere. It is shown that the proposed approach can be used to form launching zones of high altitude hypervelocity flying vehicles.     

平面四旋翼无人飞行器运送系统的轨迹规划与跟踪控制器设计

对于四旋翼无人飞行器运送系统而言,需要保证飞行过程中负载的摆幅维持在适当的范围内,并且在飞行器到达目的地后负载无残余摆动.本文针对四旋翼无人飞行器运送系统,提出了一种新颖的轨迹规划与跟踪控制方法.论文首先得到了平面四旋翼无人飞行器的运动特性与负载摆角之间的非线性耦合关系.通过相平面内的几何分析,分别设计了两个轴方向上的分段式加速度轨迹.这种轨迹具有简洁的解析表达式并可获得较高的运送效率,同时满足飞行器的速度,加速度等物理约束.为了使四旋翼无人飞行器准确跟踪规划好的轨迹,本文基于反步法设计了一种非线性跟踪控制器,并通过李雅普诺夫方法对其闭环稳定性进行分析,证明其能使跟踪误差指数收敛于零.论文最后通过仿真结果验证了本文所提出方法的可行性与有效性,及其对外界干扰的鲁棒性.     

Control of motion of the autonomous underwater vehicle at trajectory survey of the oceanic physical fields

Consideration was given to the control of motion of the autonomous underwater vehicle performing automatic measurements and mapping of the oceanic physical fields. In the general case, it is required to set up a control maintaining motion along the field isolines relying on the trajectory measurements of the level and field gradient components and identification and contouring of the anomalies by the characteristic points and generalized reference points. A practical example based on the experience of bathymetrical and hydrophysical measurements in the Arctic region using an autonomous underwater vehicle was discussed.     

Target following with motion prediction for unmanned surface vehicle operating in cluttered environments

The capability of following a moving target in an environment with obstacles is required as a basic and necessary function for realizing an autonomous unmanned surface vehicle (USV). Many target following scenarios involve a follower and target vehicles that may have different maneuvering capabilities. Moreover, the follower vehicle may not have prior information about the intended motion of the target boat. This paper presents a trajectory planning and tracking approach for following a differentially constrained target vehicle operating in an obstacle field. The developed approach includes a novel algorithm for computing a desired pose and surge speed in the vicinity of the target boat, jointly defined as a motion goal, and tightly integrates it with trajectory planning and tracking components of the entire system. The trajectory planner generates a dynamically feasible, collision-free trajectory to allow the USV to safely reach the computed motion goal. Trajectory planning needs to be sufficiently fast and yet produce dynamically feasible and short trajectories due to the moving target. This required speeding up the planning by searching for trajectories through a hybrid, pose-position state space using a multi-resolution control action set. The search in the velocity space is decoupled from the search for a trajectory in the pose space. Therefore, the underlying trajectory tracking controller computes desired surge speed for each segment of the trajectory and ensures that the USV maintains it. We have carried out simulation as well as experimental studies to demonstrate the effectiveness of the developed approach.     

Feed-rate and trajectory optimization for CNC machine tools

The key task performed by CNCs is the generation of the time-sequence of set-points for driving each physical axis of the machine tool during program execution. This interpolation of axes movement must satisfy a number of constraints on axes dynamics (velocity, acceleration, and jerk), and on process outcome (smooth tool movement and precise tracking of the nominal tool-path at the desired feed-rate). This paper presents an algorithm for CNC kernels that aims at solving the axes interpolation problem by exploiting an Optimal Control Problem formulation. With respect to other solutions proposed in the literature, the approach presented here takes an original approach by assuming a predefined path tracking tolerance—to be added to the constraints listed above—and calculating the whole trajectory (path and feed-rate profile) that satisfies the given constraints. The effectiveness of the proposed solution is benchmarked against the trajectory generated by an industrial, state-of-the-art CNC, proving a significant advantage in efficiency and smoothness of axes velocity profiles.     

An experimental investigation into the fault-tolerant control of an autonomous underwater vehicle

Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) are expected to function in an unstructured underwater environment. One of the main requirements for effective operation in such an environment is to accommodate faults. In this paper, we have investigated a new approach to the allocation of thruster forces of an autonomous underwater vehicle under thruster faults. Generally, an AUV is equipped with more thrusters than what is minimally required to produce the desired motion. The proposed framework exploits the excess number of thrusters to accommodate thruster faults during operation. First, a redundancy resolution scheme is presented that considers the presence of excess number of thrusters along with any thruster faults and determines the reference thruster forces to produce the desired motion. These reference thruster forces are then utilized in the thruster controller to generate the required motion. This approach resolves the thruster redundancy in the Cartesian space and allows the AUV to track the task-space trajectories with asymptotic reduction of the task-space errors. Results from actual underwater experiments are provided to demonstrate the viability of the proposed scheme.     

基于初次控制信号提取的迭代学习控制方法

在同一迭代学习控制(Iterative learning control, ILC)系统中,选取一个合适的初次迭代控制信号相对于从零开始学习达到目标跟踪精度的迭代次数更少.本文针对线性系统研究从历次轨迹跟踪控制信息中通过期望轨迹匹配提取初次迭代控制信号的方法.首先提出了一种轨迹基元优化匹配算法,在满足一定相似度的情况下,通过轨迹分割、平移与旋转变换,在轨迹基元库中寻找与当前期望轨迹叠合的轨迹基元组合轨迹;进而,依据线性叠加原理和轨迹叠合的平移矢量与旋转变换矩阵,获取与期望轨迹叠合的轨迹基元控制信号;在此基础上,通过轨迹基元控制信号串联组合和时间尺度变换,提取出当前期望轨迹的初次迭代控制信号.对于初次迭代控制信号在拼接处由边界条件差异引起的干扰,给出了一种H∞反馈辅助ILC方法.最后,在XYZ三轴运动平台实现所提算法,实验结果表明本文所提方法的有效性.     

Adaptive tracking control of an autonomous underwater vehicle

This paper presents the trajectory tracking control of an autonomous underwater vehicle(AUV). To cope with parametric uncertainties owing to the hydrodynamic effect, an adaptive control law is developed for the AUV to track the desired trajectory. This desired state-dependent regressor matrix-based controller provides consistent results under hydrodynamic parametric uncertainties.Stability of the developed controller is verified using the Lyapunov s direct method. Numerical simulations are carried out to study the efficacy of the proposed adaptive controller.     

An adaptive control strategy for mechanical manipulators

This paper focuses on the study of an adaptive perturbation control which tracks a desired time-based trajectory as close as possible for all times over a wide range of manipulator motion and payloads. The proposed adaptive control is based on the linearized perturbation equations in the vicinity of a nominal trajectory. The controlled system is characterized by feedforward and feedback components which can be computed separately and simultaneously. The feedforward component computes the nominal torques from the Newton-Euler equations of motion to compensate all the interaction forces among the various joints. The feedback component consisting of recursive least-square identification and an optimal adaptive self-tuning control algorithm for the linearized system computes the perturbation torques which reduce the position and velocity errors of the manipulator along the nominal trajectory. A computer simulation study was conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed adaptive control.     

Intelligent control system design for UAV using a recurrent wavelet neural network

This paper aims to propose an efficient control algorithm for the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) motion control. An intelligent control system is proposed by using a recurrent wavelet neural network (RWNN). The developed RWNN is used to mimic an ideal controller. Moreover, based on sliding-mode approach, the adaptive tuning laws of RWNN can be derived. Then, the developed RWNN control system is applied to an UAV motion control for achieving desired trajectory tracking. From the simulation results, the control scheme has been shown to achieve favorable control performance for the UAV motion control even it is subjected to control effort deterioration and crosswind disturbance.     

Time-optimal control of multiple cooperating manipulators with trajectory and motion program constraints

Two types of problems associated with time-optimal control of multiple manipulators moving a commonly held object along specified trajectories are studied. The first problem involves finding the minimum traveling time and the optimal control torques for any desired motion programs of the given trajectory. The second problem involves finding the optimal velocity distribution along the trajectory such that the motion can be completed in the minimum time. To solve these problems, a parametric form of the generalized dynamic equation is derived. An iterative search procedure is developed for solving the first problem. During the search, the lower bound of the traveling time at any point of the given trajectory is determined by using the linear programming technique. The second problem is solved by integrating the parametric dynamic equation along the given trajectory based on the phase-plane switching curve approach. The maximum acceleration and the upper bound of the operation speed at each integration instance are determined from two linear programs. The proposed methods are applicable to various complex multi-robot systems and can handle nonlinear torque-speed characteristics of the joint actuators. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Integrated Guidance and Feedback Control of Underactuated Robotics System in SE(3)

An integrated guidance and feedback control scheme for steering an underactuated vehicle through desired waypoints in three-dimensional space, is developed here. The underactuated vehicle is modeled as a rigid body with four control inputs. These control inputs actuate the three degrees of freedom of rotational motion and one degree of freedom of translational motion in a vehicle body-fixed coordinate frame. This actuation model is appropriate for a wide range of underactuated vehicles including spacecraft with internal attitude actuators, vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft, fixed-wing multirotor unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), maneuverable robotic vehicles, etc. The guidance problem is developed on the special Euclidean group of rigid body motions, SE(3), in the framework ofgeometric mechanics, which represents the vehicle dynamics globally on this configuration manifold. The integrated guidance and control algorithm selects the desired trajectory for the translational motion that passes through the given waypoints, and the desired trajectory for the attitude based on the desired thrust direction to achieve the translational motion trajectory. A feedback control law is then obtained to steer the underactuated vehicle towards the desired trajectories in translation and rotation. This integrated guidance and control scheme takes into account known bounds on control inputs and generates a trajectory that is continuous and at least twice differentiable, which can be implemented with continuous and bounded control inputs. The integrated guidance and feedback control scheme is applied to an underactuated quadcopter UAV to autonomously generate a trajectory through a series of given waypoints in SE(3) and track the desired trajectory in finite time. The overall stability analysis of the feedback system is addressed. Discrete time models for the dynamics and control schemes of the UAV are obtained in the form of Lie group variational integrators using the discrete Lagrange-d’Alembert principle. Almost global asymptotic stability of the feedback system over its state space is shown analytically and verified through numerical simulations.     

Stabilization of desired motion of a quadrotor helicopter

In this paper, a problem of constructing a control law for a quadrotor helicopter—a fourrotor helicopter is considered. The classical design of this vehicle contains a four-way frame, at which nodes electric motors with propellers rigidly mounted on their axles. An approach to solving the problem is proposed, based on application of the method of two-level control, according to which the required control is constructed in the form of the sum of a desired control and an additional feedback stabilizing the zero solution of the system of equations in deviations from the desired motion. The complete controllability of the nonstationary linear system in deviations is strictly proved. For constructing a stabilizing feedback, a known solution of the problem on linear controller with quadratic cost function is used. The proposed approach makes it possible to develop a general numerical method for constructing a control that provides a stable motion of the quadrotor helicopter along arbitrary smooth three-dimensional trajectories.     

基于运动速度的机器人学习控制

为了使机器人跟踪给定的期望轨线，提出了一种新的基于机器人运动重复性的学习控制法，在这种方法中机器人通过重复试验得到期望运动，这种控制法的优点：一是对于在期望运动附近非线性机器人动力学的近亿表达式的线性时变机械系统产生期望运动的输入力矩可不由估计机器人动力学的物理参数形成；二是可以适当的选择位置、速度和加速度反馈增益矩阵。     

The bio-inspired model based hybrid sliding-mode tracking control for unmanned underwater vehicles

In this paper a novel hybrid control strategy is developed for trajectory tracking control of unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV). The proposed hybrid control strategy consists of two subsystems: a virtual velocity controller and a sliding-mode controller. The tracking errors are shown to asymptotically converge to zero by Lyapunov stability theory using the new approach, whereas in the traditional backstepping method, speed jump occurs if the tracking error changes suddenly. The biologically inspired model is designed to smooth the virtual velocity controller output, avoid speed jumps of underwater vehicles and satisfy the thruster control constraint. The effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed control strategy are demonstrated through simulations and comparison studies.     

Terminal control of spatial motion of flying vehicles

The problem of planning the trajectory of motion of a flying vehicle is considered using a six-dimensional model, in which the state is determined by three spatial coordinates, the value of the velocity, and two angles defining the orientation of the velocity vector. The coordinates of the vector of overloads acting on the flying vehicle are considered as controls. The trajectory of motion is chosen in the class of curves with monotonic variation of the mechanical energy with account of given initial and final states and initial and final overloads. The algorithm of construction of the trajectory of motion and the algorithms of calculation of controls stabilizing the motion of the flying vehicle on the chosen trajectory are proposed. The functioning of the algorithms is illustrated by examples.