Sharif Digital Repository

The existing methods in attitude control of satellites are based on using the estimate of satellite attitude, which is usually generated by using multiple vector measurements. In this paper we propose an output feedback controller that directly uses a single vector measurement and does not use an attitude estimator. The output feedback gain is computed by solving a generalized Riccati differential equation (GRDE). The existence of a solution to the GRDE depends on a uniform controllability condition  

Time delay in attitude sensors is one of the performance limiting factors in controlling the satellite attitude. In this paper, we investigate attitude control of a fully actuated satellite in presence of constant and known delay in attitude measurement. The proposed controller consists of a matrix gain which is computed by solving a time varying matrix differential equation depending on the time delay. We assume that the moment-of-inertia matrix of the satellite is unknown. The controller guarantees asymptotic convergence of the satellite attitude and angular velocity to their desired values in presence of delay. Finally, a simulation example is presented that illustrates performance of the... 

Neglecting actuator dynamics in control of rigid manipulators can degrade performance and stability of the system. However, consideration of actuator dynamics usually requires measurement of joint torque or armature currents. In this paper, we present an adaptive controller for motion tracking of an n-DOF manipulator without using joint torque measurement. Semi-global convergence of motion and torque tracking errors to zero is proven. We show that the use of non-minimal representation of manipulator dynamics significantly simplifies its linear parametrization. Simulation example shows that avoiding joint torque measurement reduces system sensitivity to sensor failure and noise  

Offline procedures for estimating parameters of robot dynamics are practically based on the parameterized inverse dynamic model. In this paper, we present a novel approach to parameter estimation of robot dynamics which removes the necessity of parameterization (i.e. finding the minimum number of parameters from which the dynamics can be calculated through a linear model with respect to these parameters). This offline approach is based on a simple and powerful swarm intelligence tool: the particle swarm optimization (PSO). In this paper, we discuss and validate the method through simulated experiments. In "Part Two" we analyze our method in terms of robustness and compare it to robust... 

Summary Reliability of a satellite attitude control system depends on accurate detection of failures in its sensors. This paper presents an observer for robust detection and isolation of a class of failures in satellite attitude sensors. The proposed observer uses measurement of a three-axis gyro together with only one attitude sensor, and generates a residual signal which is sensitive to faults and is simultaneously robust against disturbance and noise. A nonlinear model of satellite kinematics is considered for design of the observer. The structure of the observer is in the form of a delayed continuous-time differential equation ensuring its robustness properties. A realistic simulation is... 

The existing methods in attitude control of satellites are based on employing the estimate of satellite attitude which is usually generated by using multiple vector measurements. In this paper we propose an output feedback control law that directly uses a single vector measurement and gyro, and without any need for estimating the satellite attitude. The output feedback gain is computed by solving a generalized Riccati time varying differential equation. We assume the moment-of-inertia matrix of satellite is unknown. The controller guarantees asymptotic convergence of the attitude to its desired value. A realistic simulation is presented where a magnetometer is used to provide the single... 

This study investigates the effect of noisy measurements of the angular rate in a non-linear attitude estimator for satellites. The attitude estimator uses measurement of a single attitude sensor such as Sun, Earth-horizon, star tracker or magnetometer together with a rate gyro, and guarantees exponential convergence of the attitude estimation error to zero under a no-noise condition. In view of a realistic situation where the presence of noise in gyro measurement is not negligible, this study presents stochastic and deterministic upper bounds for the attitude estimation error resulting from noisy angular rate measurement. A realistic simulation is presented to illustrate the results  

Most existing methods for satellite attitude control assume that full knowledge of satellite attitude is available by algebraic manipulation of at least two vector measurements from attitude sensors such as Sun, Earth-horizon, Earth-magnetic or star tracker sensors. Kalman filtering is usually used when only one vector measurement is available, however, asymptotic stability of nonlinear and uncertain dynamics of satellite is not guaranteed in this case. This technical note presents a coupled nonlinear estimator-controller for satellite attitude determination and control by using a 3-axis gyro and a single vector measurement for a fully actuated satellite. We assume that the moment-of-inertia... 

This paper investigates the effect of noisy measurements of the angular rate in a nonlinear attitude estimator for satellites. The attitude estimator uses measurement of a single attitude sensor such as sun, earth horizon, star tracker or magnetometer together with a rate gyro, and guarantees exponential convergence of the attitude estimation error to zero under no noise condition. This paper presents stochastic and deterministic upper bounds for the attitude estimation error affected by the noise in gyro. A realistic simulation is presented to illustrate the results  

Time delay in the evaluation of the attitude of a rigid body can significantly hinder the performance of the attitude control system. In this brief, we propose a dynamically smooth control law that guarantees asymptotic convergence of the rigid body attitude and angular velocity to their desired values in the presence of delayed attitude measurement. We assume that the moment-of-inertia matrix of the body is unknown. The control law includes a matrix gain that is computed by solving a delay-dependent and time-varying matrix differential equation. It is shown that the solvability of the matrix differential equation depends on a uniform controllability condition, which can be verified a priori... 

This study presents a method for global estimation of joint velocities in robotic manipulators. The authors consider a non-minimal model of a robotic manipulator and design an adaptive observer capable of handling uncertainties in robot dynamics. Smoothness of the dynamics of the proposed observer allows its easy implementation in comparison with non-smooth observers. Dimension of the proposed observer is shown to be at least 3n where n stands for the manipulator's degrees of freedom. This number is less than the dimension of most existing globally convergent adaptive observers. Global asymptotic convergence of state estimates to their true values is achieved under no persistency of... 

This paper presents a dynamically smooth nonlinear observer for satellite attitude determination. The proposed observer uses a 3-axis gyro and a single vector measurement to estimate the attitude of a satellite. The proposed observer preserves orthogonality of the estimated attitude matrix for all time. Almost global and exponential convergence of the estimated attitude to its true value is proven without persistency of excitation conditions. The convergence rate is shown to depend on properties of certain time varying reference vectors expressed in inertial frame. A procedure for maximizing a lower bound of the convergence rate is also presented. Performance of the proposed observer is... 

We present a method for global estimation of joint velocities in robot manipulators. A non-minimal model of a robotic manipulator is used to design an adaptive observer capable of handling uncertainties in robot dynamics. Dimension of the proposed observer is shown to be at least 3n where n stands for the manipulator degrees of freedom. This number is less than the dimension of most of existing globally convergent adaptive observers. Global asymptotic convergence of system state estimates to their true values is achieved under no persistency of excitation condition. Smoothness of the dynamics of the proposed observer allows its easy implementation in comparison with non-smooth observers.... 

Ignoring actuator dynamics in control of rigid manipulators can in practice result in performance degradation or loss of system stability. However, consideration of actuator dynamics usually requires measurement of robot joint torques. This paper addresses motion tracking control of an n-DOF rigid robot by taking into account its actuator dynamics. Joint torque measurement is avoided by using an adaptive observer. The backstepping technique is adopted to develop a dynamically smooth adaptive nonlinear controller dealing with uncertainties in manipulator and actuator dynamics. Semi-global convergence of motion tracking errors as well as torque estimation error are proven without any... 

Time-delay in sensor measurements can be a frequent cause of instability and performance degradation in a robotic system. In this paper, motion tracking of rigid manipulators in presence of constant and known delay in sensors is investigated. By using non-minimal model of a manipulator, a dynamically smooth controller based on the Linear Matrix Inequality (LMI) approach is proposed which guarantees asymptotic tracking of desired joint angles and velocities in presence of delayed measurements. For a given controller the maximum amount of delay that preserves system stability is computed by solving an LMI optimization and also by numerical simulations, and the results are compared. Finally, a... 

Waveform design for target identification and classification in MIMO radar systems has been studied in several recent works. While the previous works assumed that the noise was independent of the transmission signals, here we extend the results to the signal dependent noise (clutter). We consider two scenarios. In the first scenario it is assumed that different transmit antennas see uncorrelated aspects of the target. In the second scenario, we consider the correlated target. As clutter is dependent to signal, target estimation error cannot vanish only by increasing the transmission power. It can be shown that in the second scenario, MIMO radar receiver can nullify the clutter subspace.... 

Standard centralized motion controllers for robotic systems require precise model structure for manipulator dynamics. The controlled robot is also sensitive to sensor failure as each joint in robot receives information from sensors of all other joints. In this paper, we present a dynamically smooth adaptive decentralized controller for robotic manipulators where the control law in each joint depends only on local measurements from that joint. The use of possibly un-calibrated joint torque sensors eliminates the need for modeling link dynamics. Global and asymptotic motion tracking is achieved. Simulation examples demonstrate significant improvement in robustness of the controlled system in... 

This paper is devoted to the design of a port Hamiltonian controller for different scenarios of brachiation movement by a two-link bio-inspired robot called brachiating robot. A unified technique for trajectory tracking control problem of nonholonomic (drift-less) port Hamiltonian systems was introduced in the past, which exploits a generalized canonical transformation to form an error system in order to convert the trajectory tracking problem into a stabilization one. Although the method is novel and promising, only fully actuated systems are considered and success of the approach relies on the possibility of solving a set of partial differential equations (PDEs). Considering the fact that... 

This paper proposes a globally and exponentially convergent predictive observer for attitude and position estimation based on landmark measurements and velocity (angular and linear) readings. It is assumed that landmark measurements are available with time-delay. The maximum value of the sensor delay under which the estimation error converges to zero is calculated. Synthesis of the observer is based on a representation of rigid-body kinematics and sensor delay, formulated via ordinary and partial differential equations (ODE-PDE). Observability condition specifies necessary and sufficient landmark configuration for convergence of attitude and position estimation error to zero. Finally, for... 

We propose an observer for attitude and position estimation of a rigid body using translational and angular velocity measurements together with a single landmark. Under an observability condition depending on landmark position, global and asymptotic convergence of attitude and position estimation errors to zero is achieved. We extend the observer for the case of nonideal velocity measurements. Simulation examples demonstrate convergence properties of the observer in the face of noise and bias in velocity measurements