Sharif Digital Repository

This paper presents a supervisory multi-agent control policy over an acoustic communication network subject to imperfections (packet dropout and transmission delay) for localisation of an underwater flow source (e.g., source of chemical pollution, fresh water, etc.) with an unknown location at the bottom of the ocean. A two-loop control policy combined with a coding strategy for reliable communication is presented to perform the above task. A simulator is developed and used to evaluate the trade-offs between quality of communication, transmission delay and control for a fleet of autonomous underwater vehicles supervised over a noisy acoustic communication network by an autonomous surface... 

Airships are inherently sensitive to random atmospheric disturbances that could potentially make their data gathering and observation missions a formidable task. In this context robust closed loop feedback controllers are important. The present study is therefore focused on optimal feedback controller design of an indigenous domestically designed airship (DA) for added robustness against atmospheric disturbances. While the general airship six degrees of freedom (6DoF) governing equations of motion are mathematically nonlinear, one often needs to resort to local linearization methods to benefit from proven linear closed loop controller (CLC) design approaches. In this sense an optimal linear... 

Airships are inherently sensitive to random atmospheric disturbances that could potentially make their data gathering and observation missions a formidable task. In this context robust closed loop feedback controllers are important. The present study is therefore focused on optimal feedback controller design of an indigenous domestically designed airship (DA) for added robustness against atmospheric disturbances. While the general airship six degrees of freedom (6DoF) governing equations of motion are mathematically nonlinear, one often needs to resort to local linearization methods to benefit from proven linear closed loop controller (CLC) design approaches. In this sense an optimal linear... 

Atomic force microscope (AFM) is one of the most versatile and powerful devices capable of producing high-resolution images of nanomaterial. Many researchers are widely investigating to improve the scanning speed and image quality of AFM by proposing different techniques. Here, we aim to present a novel approach based on the smooth orthogonal decomposition for the estimation of the surface topography in AFM. The technique proposed in this research not only eliminates the need for a closed-loop controller but also acquires the surface three-dimensional shape (topography) very quickly and accurately. The proposed technique relies on the fact that in the tapping mode of atomic force microscopy,... 

Kinematic control of a special hyper-redundant manipulator with lockable joints is studied. In this manipulator, the extra cables are replaced by a locking system to reduce the weight of the structure and the number of actuators. This manipulator has discrete and continuous variables due to its locking system. Therefore, a hybrid approach has been adopted in control. At first the forward kinematics and velocity kinematics of this manipulator are derived, and then a novel closed-loop control algorithm is presented. This algorithm consists of decision making, an inner loop controller, and kinematic calculation blocks. The decision making block is the logical part of the control scheme in which... 

In this paper, the convergence and stability conditions of extended DMC in the control of nonlinear SISO and MIMO systems are investigated. The formulations are based on the ordinary DMC in which, with successive linearization of the nonlinear model and new interpretation of disturbance, the nonlinear extension is deduced. In addition, new convergence and stability criteria are derived for SISO and MIMO systems. These criteria include convergence and stability in the case of longer control (M > 1) and prediction (P > 1) horizons, as well as the finite and infinite sampling time. Finally, the simulation results for a MIMO (3 × 3) model, based on a power unit nonlinear plant, are presented. ©... 

This article presents a robust adaptive fractional order proportional integral derivative controller for a class of uncertain fractional order nonlinear systems using fractional order sliding mode control. The goal is to achieve closed-loop control system robustness against the system uncertainty and external disturbance. The fractional order proportional integral derivative controller gains are adjustable and will be updated using the gradient method from a proper sliding surface. A supervisory controller is used to guarantee the stability of the closed-loop fractional order proportional integral derivative control system. Finally, fractional order Duffing–Holmes system is used to verify... 

In this article, an adaptive nonlinear controller is designed to synchronize two uncertain fractional-order chaotic systems using fractional-order sliding mode control. The controller structure and adaptation laws are chosen such that asymptotic stability of the closed-loop control system is guaranteed. The adaptation laws are being calculated from a proper sliding surface using the Lyapunov stability theory. This method guarantees the closed-loop control system robustness against the system uncertainties and external disturbances. Eventually, the presented method is used to synchronize two fractional-order gyro and Duffing systems, and the numerical simulation results demonstrate the... 

This research deals with developing an intelligent trajectory tracking control approach for an aircraft in the presence of internal and external disturbances. Internal disturbances including actuators faults, unmodeled dynamics, and model uncertainties as well as the external disturbances such as wind turbulence significantly affect the performance of the common trajectory tracking control approaches. There are several fault-tolerant control approaches in the literature to overcome the effects of specific actuator or sensor faults during the flight. However, trajectory tracking control of an air vehicle in the presence of unexpected faults and simultaneous presence of wind turbulence is... 

In the aspect of further development of investigations in the area of spacecraft modeling and analysis of the control scheme, a new hybrid finite-time robust three-axis cascade attitude control approach is proposed via pulse modulation synthesis. The full quaternion based control approach proposed here is organized in association with both the inner and the outer closed loops. It is shown that the inner closed loop, which consists of the sliding mode finite-time control approach, the pulse width pulse frequency modulator, the control allocation and finally the dynamics of the spacecraft is realized to track the three-axis referenced commands of the angular velocities. The pulse width pulse... 

Nonlinearity caused by actuator constraint plays a destructive role in the overall performance of a control system. A model predictive controller can handle the problem by implementing a constrained optimization algorithm. Due to the iterative nature of the solution, however, this requires high computation power. In the present work we propose a new method to approach the problem by separating the constraint handling from the predictive control job. The input constraint effects are dealt with in a newly defined component called a predictive directional compensator, which works based on the directionality and predictive concepts. Through implementation of the proposed method, the... 

Nowadays, exoskeletons have been gaining popularity due to their potential use in rehabilitation and augmentation. These robots often utilize series elastic actuators to facilitate compliant interaction with the human. Numerous studies have been carried out with the purpose of identification and control of these type of actuators. The goal of this paper is to provide a method for dynamic modeling and identification of series elastic actuators. This model is then used in the control loop as a feed-forward term to eliminate the actuator's dynamics. Each series elastic actuator used in the Sharif wearable robot, uses a brushless DC motor, a torsional spring, a harmonic drive, a timing belt, a... 

Gait training is a critical rehabilitation procedure for patients suffering from walking problems. It, however, puts the therapist in high orthopedic risk since he should prevent the patient from possible falling. Body weight support system is a new technology helping such patients and the involved therapist by unloading a percent of the patient's weight. A new over-ground body weight support is introduced in this article. The system is composed of two main modules namely unloading and traction. The unloading module is capable of suspending an individual's weight up to 1000N dynamically. The whole system is attached to an overhead rail, moving over the head of the patient by the traction... 

In this paper, a new post-fault vector control of an induction motor, fed by a faulty Cascaded H-Bridge (CHB) inverter, is presented. Among fault tolerant control methods, waveform based methods are suitable for closed-loop control and provide higher output voltage. In order to control the speed of the motor, a rotor field oriented control (RFOC) is used. During the fault, the FOC is modified to decrease the fault impact on the motor as low as possible. The proposed method is validated by means of simulation results for different loads and faults. The results show an improvement in both the final operating point and the transient response of the motor  

In this paper, a modified frequency control model is proposed, where the demand response (DR) control loop is added to the traditional load frequency control (LFC) model to improve the frequency regulation of the power system. One of the main obstacles for using DR in the frequency regulation is communication delay which exists in transferring data from control center to appliances. To overcome this issue, an adaptive delay compensator (ADC) is used in order to compensate the communication delay in the control loop. In this regard, a weighted combination of several vertex compensators, whose weights are updated according to the measured delay, is employed. Generating the phase lead is the... 

In addition to perfectly steering the output concentration of a process network to an exogenous set-point, a desired synthetically implemented biological controller should be able to robustly maintain this regulated output in the face of the extrinsic disturbances and inherent uncertainties due to an evervarying environment besides the imprecise modeling. Such an ability, which is called robust perfect adaptation (RPA), can be achieved by integral feedback control (IFC). Answering how IFC is (biochemically) constructible in generally unknown synthetic networks has been a research focus in the community. One of these answers, which has been well investigated previously, is to utilize a simple... 

This work deals with the robust D-stability test of linear time-invariant ( LTI ) general fractional order control systems in a closed loop where the system and - or the controller may be of fractional order. The concept of general implies that the characteristic equation of the LTI closed loop control system may be of both commensurate and non-commensurate orders, both the coefficients and the orders of the characteristic equation may be nonlinear functions of uncertain parameters, and the coefficients may be complex numbers. Some new specific areas for the roots of the characteristic equation are found so that they reduce the computational burden of testing the robust D-stability. Based on... 

This article focuses on the robust D-stabilization analysis of fractional-order control systems where each of the system and the controller may be of fractional order. The coefficients of the system are considered as complex linear functions of interval uncertain parameters, so this article deals with fractional-order polytopic systems. First, a necessary and sufficient condition is introduced for the robust D-stabilization of the closed-loop control system based on the zero exclusion condition and the value set concept. Then, the geometric pattern of the value set of the characteristic polynomial is obtained analytically using the exposed vertices. Second, a function is presented to check...