Cooperative control of multiple surface vessels with discrete‐time periodic communications

This paper addresses the problem of cooperative path‐following of networked autonomous surface vessels with discrete‐time periodic communications. The objective is to steer a group of autonomous vehicles along given spatial paths, while holding a desired inter‐vehicle formation pattern. For a given class of marine vessels, we show how Lyapunov‐based techniques, graph theory, and results from networked control systems can be brought together to yield a decentralized control structure where the dynamics of the cooperating vessels and the constraints imposed by the topology of the inter‐vehicle communication network are explicitly taken into account. Cooperation is achieved by adjusting the speed of each vessel along its path according to information exchanged periodically on the positions of a subset of the other vessels, as determined by the communications topology adopted. The closed‐loop system that is obtained by putting together the path‐following and cooperation strategies takes an interconnected feedback form where both systems are input‐to‐state stable with respect to the outputs of each other. Using a small‐gain theorem, stability and convergence of the overall system are guaranteed for adequate choices of the controller gains. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

多自主船协同路径跟踪的自适应动态面控制

为实现多自主船含模型不确定与未知风浪流干扰下的协同路径跟踪控制,提出了一种基于神经网络自适应动态面控制的协同路径跟踪算法.该算法采用单隐层(SHL)神经网络逼近模型不确定性以及海洋环境干扰,所引入的动态面设计技术显著降低了控制算法的复杂性.同时将网络通信约束考虑在内,通过设计分散式协同控制律有效地降低了信息通讯量.Lyapunov稳定性分析证明了闭环系统所有的状态和信号是有界的,并且通过选择合适的设计参数可使跟踪误差为任意小.对比仿真结果验证了所提方法的有效性.     

Nonsingular path following control of a unicycle in the presence of parametric modelling uncertainties

A new type of control law is derived to steer the dynamic model of a wheeled robot of unicycle type along a desired path. The methodology adopted for path following control deals explicitly with vehicle dynamics and plant parameter uncertainty. Furthermore, it overcomes stringent initial condition constraints that are present in a number of path following control strategies described in the literature. This is done by controlling explicitly the rate of progression of a ‘virtual target’ to be tracked along the path, thus bypassing the problems that arise when the position of the virtual target is simply defined by the projection of the actual vehicle on that path. In the paper, a nonlinear adaptive control law is derived that yields convergence of the (closed‐loop system) path following error trajectories to zero. Controller design relies on Lyapunov theory and backstepping techniques. Simulation results illustrate the performance of the control system proposed. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Adaptive control and constrained control allocation for overactuated ocean surface vessels

In this article, the constrained control allocation is proposed for overactuated ocean surface vessels with parametric uncertainties and unknown external disturbances. The constrained control allocation is transformed into a convex quadratic programming problem and a recurrent neural network is employed to solve it. To complete the control allocation, the control command is derived via the backstepping method. Adaptive tracking control is proposed for the full-state feedback case using the backstepping technique and the Lyapunov synthesis. It is proved that the proposed adaptive tracking control is able to guarantee semi-global uniform ultimate boundedness of all signals in the closed-loop system. Then, the obtained control command is distributed to each actuator of overactuated ocean vessels. Finally, simulation studies are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed adaptive tracking control and the constrained control allocation scheme.     

无人艇全分布式动态事件触发编队控制

针对通信资源受限的多无人艇(USV)编队控制问题, 本文提出了一种动态事件触发数据传输机制以降低通信频率, 减少控制算法对系统带宽的占用. 首先, 基于滑模和自适应控制算法设计一种全分布式编队控制器, 使得所有编队成员在保持预设队形的同时能够完成对期望轨迹的跟踪. 与现有编队控制器相比, 该控制器不需要通信网络的全局信息. 然后, 基于Lyapunov稳定性理论证明了编队跟踪误差以及所有闭环信号都能达到稳定状态. 此外,该算法能够保证触发时间序列不表现出Zeno行为. 最后, 通过数值仿真验证了全分布式编队控制器的有效性     

Actuator fault‐tolerant control of ocean surface vessels with input saturation

In this paper, an actuator robust fault‐tolerant control is proposed for ocean surface vessels with parametric uncertainties and unknown disturbances. Using the backstepping technique and Lyapunov synthesis method, the adaptive tracking control is first developed by incorporating the actuator configuration matrix and considering actuator saturation constraints. The changeable actuator configuration matrix caused by rotatable propulsion devices is considered. Next, the actuator fault‐tolerant control is developed for the case when faults occur in propulsion devices of the ocean surface vessel. Rigorous stability analysis is carried out to show that the proposed fault‐tolerant control can guarantee the stability of the closed‐loop system under certain actuator failure. Finally, simulation studies are given to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed adaptive tracking control and fault‐tolerant control. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

多无人水面艇协同海上溢油羽流监测

本文讨论多无人水面艇协同海上溢油污染羽流监测问题,其中羽流扩张过程是由二维空间对流–扩散方程描述.本文的主要目标是为水面无人艇构建基于领导–跟随–锚的协同控制算法,实现其对羽流边界的动态合围与实时跟踪,其中羽流边界是一个预先设定阈值的水平集合.为此,选择两艘无人水面艇分别将其设定为边界领导艇和边界锚艇,并将其余艇设定为...     

Adaptive neural control for cooperative path following of marine surface vehicles: state and output feedback

This paper addresses the cooperative path-following problem of multiple marine surface vehicles subject to dynamical uncertainties and ocean disturbances induced by unknown wind, wave and ocean current. The control design falls neatly into two parts. One is to steer individual marine surface vehicle to track a predefined path and the other is to synchronise the along-path speed and path variables under the constraints of an underlying communication network. Within these two formulations, a robust adaptive path-following controller is first designed for individual vehicles based on backstepping and neural network techniques. Then, a decentralised synchronisation control law is derived by means of consensus on along-path speed and path variables based on graph theory. The distinct feature of this design lies in that synchronised path following can be reached for any undirected connected communication graphs without accurate knowledge of the model. This result is further extended to the output feedback case, where an observer-based cooperative path-following controller is developed without measuring the velocity of each vehicle. For both designs, rigorous theoretical analysis demonstrate that all signals in the closed-loop system are semi-global uniformly ultimately bounded. Simulation results validate the performance and robustness improvement of the proposed strategy.     

洋流影响下基于运动矢径的AUV协同定位方法

针对水下自主航行器（AUV）协同定位受水下未知定常洋流影响的问题,给出一种洋流影响下基于运动矢径的AUV协同定位方法.利用AUV的运动学方程和基于运动矢径的量测方程,建立AUV的导航模型;通过扩展的卡尔曼滤波,设计了协同定位滤波算法;利用该算法对洋流速度进行估计,以补偿AUV定位误差.仿真结果表明,该算法能有效估计未知定常洋流速度的大小,并对AUV定位误差进行实时补偿,显著提高了AUV的定位精度.     

Coordinated formation pattern control of multiple marine surface vehicles with model uncertainty and time-varying ocean currents

This paper presents a data-driven modeling and optimization method for cavity filters, according to a limited amount of measurement data. In the method, a model that reveals the effect of mechanical structure on electrical performance of cavity filters is firstly developed by an improved algorithm, which can increase the modeling accuracy of small data set by incorporating multi-kernel and prior knowledge into the framework of linear programming support vector regression. Then, an approach to optimize the structure of cavity filters is formulated by using the developed data-based model, and the obtained results can assist the fabrication of the same filter in the future. Some experiments from a synthetic example and a practical application of cavity filter have been carried out, and the experimental results confirm the effectiveness of the method. The model is particularly suited to a computer-aided manufacturing of volume-producing filters, and the proposed algorithm shows great potential in some applications where the experimental data are very few and the prior knowledge is available.     

Cooperative path following of constrained autonomous vehicles with model predictive control and event‐triggered communications

We present a solution to the problem of multiple vehicle cooperative path following (CPF) that takes explicitly into account vehicle input constraints, the topology of the intervehicle communication network, and time‐varying communication delays. The objective is to steer a group of vehicles along given spatial paths, at speeds that may be path dependent, while holding a feasible geometric formation. The solution involves decoupling the original CPF problem into two subproblems: (i) single path following of input‐constrained vehicles and (ii) coordination of an input‐constrained multiagent system. The first is solved by adopting a sampled‐data model predictive control scheme, whereas the latter is tackled using a novel distributed control law with an event‐triggered communication (ETC) mechanism. The proposed strategy yields a closed‐loop CPF system that is input‐to‐state‐stable with respect to the system's state (consisting of the path following error of all vehicles and their coordination errors) and the system's input, which includes triggering thresholds for ETC communications and communication delays. Furthermore, with the proposed ETC mechanism, the number of communications among the vehicles are significantly reduced. Simulation examples of multiple autonomous vehicles executing CPF maneuvers in 2D under different communication scenarios illustrate the efficacy of the CPF strategy proposed.     

Globally Stable Adaptive Dynamic Surface Control for Cooperative Path Following of Multiple Underactuated Autonomous Underwater Vehicles

The cooperative path following problem of multiple underactuated autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) involves two tasks. The first one is to force each AUV to converge to the desired parameterized path. The second one is to satisfy the requirement of a cooperative behavior along the paths. In this paper, both of the tasks have been further studied. For the first one, a simplified path following controller is proposed by incorporating the dynamic surface control (DSC) technique to avoid the calculation of derivatives of virtual control signals. Besides, in order to handle the uncertain dynamics, a new type of neural network (NN) adaptive controller is derived, and then an NN based energy‐efficient path following controller is firstly proposed, which consists of an adaptive neural controller dominating in the neural active region and an extra robust controller working outside the neural active region. For the second one, in order to reduce the amount of communications between multiple AUVs, a distributed estimator for the reference common speed is firstly proposed as determined by the communications topology adopted, which means the global knowledge of the reference speed is relaxed for the problem of cooperative path following. The overall algorithm ensures that all the signals in the closed‐loop system are globally uniformly ultimately bounded (GUUB) and the output of the system converges to a small neighborhood of the reference trajectory by properly choosing the design parameters. Simulation results validate the performance and robustness of the proposed strategy.     

Fault‐tolerant path‐following control for in‐wheel‐motor‐driven autonomous ground vehicles with differential steering

Over the past several decades, the automobile industry has denoted significant research efforts to developing in‐wheel‐motor‐driven autonomous ground vehicles (IWM‐AGVs) with active front‐wheel steering. One of the most fundamental issues for IWM‐AGVs is path following, which is important for automated driving to ensure that the vehicle can track a target‐planned path during local navigation. However, the path‐following task may fail if the system experiences a stuck fault in the active front‐wheel steering. In this paper, a fault‐tolerant control (FTC) strategy is presented for the path following of IWM‐AGVs in the presence of a stuck fault in the active front‐wheel steering. For this purpose, differential steering is used to generate differential torque between the left and right wheels in IWM‐AGVs, and an adaptive triple‐step control approach is applied to realize coordinated lateral and longitudinal path‐following maneuvering. The parameter uncertainties for the cornering stiffness and external disturbances are considered to make the vehicles robust to different driving environments. The effectiveness of the proposed scheme is evaluated with a high‐fidelity and full‐car model based on the veDYNA‐Simulink joint platform.     

Formation shape control based on bearing rigidity

Distance measurements are not the only geometric quantities that can be used for multi-agent formation shape control. Bearing measurements can be used in conjunction with distances. This article employs bearing rigidity for mobile formations, which was developed for robot and sensor network localisation, so that bearings can be used for shape control in mobile formations. The first part of this article examines graph theoretical models for formation network analysis and control law design that are needed to maintain the shape of a formation in two-dimensional space, while the formation moves as a cohesive whole. Bearing-based shape control for a formation of mobile agents involves the design of distributed control laws that ensure the formation moves, so that bearing constraints maintain some desired values. The second part of this article focuses on the design of a distributed control scheme for nonholonomic agents to solve the bearing-based formation shape control problem. In particular, a control law using feedback linearisation is proposed based on shape variables. We simulate the shape control behaviour on differential drive agents for an exemplary bearing rigid formation using the results obtained in the first and second parts of this article.     

含模型不确定性移动机器人路径跟踪的分层模糊控制

对受非完整约束且含模型不确定性的移动机器人基于分层模糊系统设计了跟踪期望几何路径的鲁棒间接自适应控制方案.此方法除实现路径跟踪外,还可避免控制器的奇异性并保证跟踪方向.由于控制结构中使用了分层模糊系统,大大减少了模糊规则数目;并用鲁棒控制项对模糊系统逼近误差进行补偿,减少了其对跟踪精度的影响.证明了闭环系统跟踪误差收敛到原点的小邻域内,且可通过适当增大鲁棒控制项的设计参数使跟踪误差进一步减小.最后用实验结果验证了方法的有效性.     

Cooperative adaptive control for synchronization of second‐order systems with unknown nonlinearities

This paper studies synchronization to a desired trajectory for multi‐agent systems with second‐order integrator dynamics and unknown nonlinearities and disturbances. The agents can have different dynamics and the treatment is for directed graphs with fixed communication topologies. The command generator or leader node dynamics is also nonlinear and unknown. Cooperative tracking adaptive controllers are designed based on each node maintaining a neural network parametric approximator and suitably tuning it to guarantee stability and performance. A Lyapunov‐based proof shows the ultimate boundedness of the tracking error. A simulation example with nodes having second‐order Lagrangian dynamics verifies the performance of the cooperative tracking adaptive controller. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A review of path following control strategies for autonomous robotic vehicles: Theory,simulations, and experiments

This article presents an in-depth review of path following control strategies that are applicable to a wide range class of marine, ground, and aerial autonomous robotic vehicles. From a control system standpoint, path following can be formulated as the problem of stabilizing a path following error system that describes the dynamics of position and possibly orientation errors of a vehicle with respect to a path, with the errors defined in an appropriate reference frame. In spite of the large variety of path following methods described in the literature we show that, in principle, most of them can be categorized in two groups: stabilization of the path following error system expressed either in the vehicle's body frame or in a frame attached to a “reference point” moving along the path, such as a Frenet-Serret (F-S) frame or a Parallel Transport (P-T) frame. With this observation, we provide a unified formulation that is simple but general enough to cover many methods available in the literature. We then discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each method, comparing them from the design and implementation standpoint. We further show experimental results of the path following methods obtained from field trials testing with under-actuated and over-actuated autonomous marine vehicles. In addition, we introduce open-source Matlab and Gazebo/ROS simulation toolboxes that are helpful in testing path following methods before their integration in the combined guidance, navigation, and control systems of autonomous vehicles.     

Adaptive hybrid force/position control of robot manipulators using an adaptive force estimator in the presence of parametric uncertainty

This study is devoted to sensorless adaptive force/position control of robot manipulators using a position-based adaptive force estimator (AFE) and a force-based adaptive environment compliance estimator. Unlike the other sensorless method in force control that uses disturbance observer and needs an accurate model of the manipulator, in this method, the unknown parameters of the robot can be estimated along with the force control. Even more, the environment compliance can be estimated simultaneously to achieve tracking force control. In fact, this study deals with three challenging problems: No force sensor is used, environment stiffness is unknown, and some parametric uncertainties exist in the robot model. A theorem offers control laws and updating laws for two control loops. In the inner loop, AFE estimates the exerted force, and then, the force control law in the outer loop modifies the desired trajectory of the manipulator for the adaptive tracking loop. Besides, an updating law updates the estimated compliance to provide an accurate tracking force control. Some experimental results of a PHANToM Premium robot are provided to validate the proposed scheme. In addition, some simulations are presented that verify the performance of the controller for different situations in interaction.     

基于自适应神经网络的AUVs路径跟踪控制

为解决由于随时间变化水动力阻尼引起的参数变化和不确定性的问题,提出了基于径向基函数神经网络的未知评估算法,引入自适应算法以保证神经网络权值的最优评估.基于Lyapunov稳定性理论,设计一种自适应神经网络控制器以保证路径跟踪系统中所有误差状态都趋于稳定.为了验证该控制器的可行性,对系统施加如位置误差、方向误差等虚拟干扰,证明该控制器可将误差消减为零.另一方面,机器人在以恒定的速度行驶时,每个航点被指定一个适合半径的圆弧可以保证其有较高的精度.为了评估路径跟踪控制器的性能,提出直线型和直线加圆弧型路径方案.仿真结果表明,该控制器可以有效地消除机器人非线性和模型不确定性造成的干扰.     

A new formation control of multiple underactuated surface vessels

This work investigates a new formation control problem of multiple underactuated surface vessels. The controller design is based on input-output linearisation technique, graph theory, consensus idea and some nonlinear tools. The proposed smooth time-varying distributed control law guarantees that the multiple underactuated surface vessels globally exponentially converge to some desired geometric shape, which is especially centred at the initial average position of vessels. Furthermore, the stability analysis of zero dynamics proves that the orientations of vessels tend to some constants that are dependent on the initial values of vessels, and the velocities and control inputs of the vessels decay to zero. All the results are obtained under the communication scenarios of static directed balanced graph with a spanning tree. Effectiveness of the proposed distributed control scheme is demonstrated using a simulation example.