Robust formation control without velocity measurement of the leader robot

In this paper a control problem of leader–follower motion coordination of multiple nonholonomic mobile robots is addressed and subsequently in the proposed scheme, a reference trajectory generated based on the information from the leader is tracked by the follower robots. To alleviate demanded information on the leader, specifically to eliminate the measurement requirement or estimation of the leader's velocity and dynamics, a virtual vehicle is constructed whereby its trajectory converges to the reference trajectory of the follower. Trajectory tracking controller is then designed to allow the follower robot to track the virtual vehicle using neural network approximation, in combination with the backstepping and Lyapunov direct design technique and finally the performance and effectiveness of the controller is verified throughout the experiments.     

Backstepping-based cooperative and adaptive tracking control design for a group of underactuated AUVs in horizontal plan

In this paper, we investigate new implementable cooperative adaptive backstepping controllers for a group of underactuated autonomous vehicles that are communicating with their local neighbours to track a time-varying virtual leader of which the relative position may only be available to a portion of the team members. At the kinematic cooperative control level of the autonomous underwater vehicle, the virtual cooperative controller is basically designed on a proportional and derivative consensus algorithm presented in Ren (2010) Ren, W. (2010). Consensus tracking under directed interaction topologies: Algorithms and experiments. IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology, 18, 230–237.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], which involves velocity information from local neighbours. In this paper, we propose a new design algorithm based on singular perturbation theory that precludes the use of the neighbours’ velocity information in the cooperative design. At the dynamic cooperative control level, calculation of the partial derivatives of some stabilising functions which in turn will contain velocity information from the local neighbours is required. To facilitate the implementation of the cooperative controllers, we propose a command filter approach technique to avoid analytic differentiation of the virtual cooperative control laws. We show how Lyapunov-based techniques and graph theory can be combined together to yield a robust cooperative controller where the uncertain dynamics of the cooperating vehicles and the constraints on the communication topology which contains a directed spanning tree are explicitly taken into account. Simulation results with a dynamic model of underactuated autonomous underwater vehicles moving on the horizontal plane are presented and discussed.     

Proteins Marking the Sequence of Genotoxic Signaling from Irradiated Mesenchymal Stromal Cells to CD34+ Cells

Non-targeted effects (NTE) of ionizing radiation may initiate myeloid neoplasms (MN). Here, protein mediators (I) in irradiated human mesenchymal stromal cells (MSC) as the NTE source, (II) in MSC conditioned supernatant and (III) in human bone marrow CD34+ cells undergoing genotoxic NTE were investigated. Healthy sublethal irradiated MSC showed significantly increased levels of reactive oxygen species. These cells responded by increasing intracellular abundance of proteins involved in proteasomal degradation, protein translation, cytoskeleton dynamics, nucleocytoplasmic shuttling, and those with antioxidant activity. Among the increased proteins were THY1 and GNA11/14, which are signaling proteins with hitherto unknown functions in the radiation response and NTE. In the corresponding MSC conditioned medium, the three chaperones GRP78, CALR, and PDIA3 were increased. Together with GPI, these were the only four altered proteins, which were associated with the observed genotoxic NTE. Healthy CD34+ cells cultured in MSC conditioned medium suffered from more than a six-fold increase in γH2AX focal staining, indicative for DNA double-strand breaks, as well as numerical and structural chromosomal aberrations within three days. At this stage, five proteins were altered, among them IQGAP1, HMGB1, and PA2G4, which are involved in malign development. In summary, our data provide novel insights into three sequential steps of genotoxic signaling from irradiated MSC to CD34+ cells, implicating that induced NTE might initiate the development of MN.     

Coordinated Path-Following Control for a Group of Underactuated Surface Vessels

This paper addresses the problem of coordinating a group of underactuated ships along given paths (path following) while holding a desired intership formation pattern. The solution to this problem unfolds into two basic subproblems. In the first step, a path-following controller is derived to force each underactuated ship to follow a reference path subject to constant disturbances induced by wave, wind, and ocean current. The controller is designed such that the ship moves on the path while its total velocity is maintained tangential to the path. In the second step, the speeds of the vehicles are adjusted so as to synchronize the positions of the corresponding virtual targets (or so-called coordination states), in the sense that the derivative of each path is left as a free input to synchronize the ships' motion. The proposed coordination controller uses a combination of Lyapunov direct method, backstepping, and concepts from graph theory. When dealing with the path-following coordination problem, it is considered that each ship transmits its coordination state to other ships with a varying time delay as determined by the communication topology. The coordination errors' convergence is achieved based on a proposed Lyapunov-Krasovskii function. Simulation results are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.     

Novel bacterial foraging-based ANFIS for speed control of matrix converter-fed industrial BLDC motors operated under low speed and high torque

In this paper, a novel adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS)-based control technique optimized by Bacterial Foraging Optimization Algorithm for speed control of matrix converter (MC)-fed brushless direct current (BLDC) motor is presented. ANFIS is considered to be one of the most promising technologies for control of electrical drives fed by MC. Optimizing the training parameters of ANFIS, to improve its performance, is still being considered by several researchers recently. Parameters of the online ANFIS controller such as learning rate (η), forgetting factor (λ) and steepest descent momentum constant (α) are optimized by using the proposed algorithm. For the purpose of comparison, proportional integral derivative controller, fuzzy logic controller, PSO-ANFIS and BAT-ANFIS are considered. Set point tracking performances of the proposed system are carried out at various operating points for an industrial BLDC motor operating at a maximum rated speed of 380 rpm and torque of 6.4 N m. Time domain specifications such as rise time, settling time, peak time, steady-state error and peak overshoot in the presence and absence of load torque disturbances are presented. Time integral performance measures such as integral square error, integral absolute error, and integral time multiplied absolute error are analyzed for various operating conditions. Speed fluctuation in the output of BLDC motor is dependent on the source current harmonics of the inverter/converter. To illustrate this, total harmonic distortion (THD) analysis is carried out for the existing PWM inverter and the proposed MC, and it is proved that MC results in reduced THD, as compared to PWM inverter. Simulation results confirm that the proposed controller outperforms the other existing control techniques under various set speed and torque conditions. Statistical analysis is effectively carried out to prove the effectiveness of the proposed controller. Experimental analysis is performed to validate the performance of the proposed control scheme.

     

Robust adaptive path-following control of underactuated marine vessel with off-track error constraint

In this paper, a new robust adaptive controller is investigated to force an underactuated surface marine vessel to follow a predefined parameterised path at a desired speed, despite actuator saturation and the presence of model uncertainties as well as environmental disturbances induced by waves, wind and sea-currents. To ensure robustness of the path-following controller, time-varying constraint on the off-track error (i.e. the maximal distance from the ship to the reference path) is considered. To address the off-track error constraint the tan-barrier Lyapunov function is incorporated with the control scheme, where the idea of auxiliary design system introduced in Chen, Sam, and Ren (2011) is adopted and its states are used in combination with backstepping and Lyapunov synthesis to adaptive tracking control design with guaranteed stability. Furthermore, the command filters are adopted to implement physical constraints on the virtual control laws so that analytic differentiation of the virtual control laws is avoided. We show that the proposed robust adaptive control law is able to guarantee semi-global uniform ultimate bounded stability of the closed-loop system. Numerical simulations and experimental results are carried out to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.