Sharif Digital Repository

In this article, research has been carried out on the control technique of autonomous mobile robots to navigate in unknown environments, avoiding static and moving obstacles using eight ultrasonic sensors for obstacle recognition.
In this article we used simple three wheeled robots. Each robot has a passive caster wheel and two active fixed wheels which can act independently. In addition robots have holonomic constraints like maximum acceleration, maximum speed and maximum angular velocity, so robot’s speed and orientation change independently and these changes are small in each time step. Each robot has eight ultrasonic sensors, each of them cover 22.5 degree of space from robot‘s... 

In this thesis control of wheeled mobile manipulators for cooperative object transportation is investigated. Full dynamic model of a mobile manipulator with a three wheeled mobile base and a three DOF manipulator is derived using Gibbs-Appell method. Input-output linearization technique is used to control individual robots. Transporting the object is divided into two steps, first robots use a decentralized behavior-based method to approach and surround the object. Then virtual structure method is used to control the robots to transport the object cooperatively. Simulation results with three robots handling an object are presented to show the effectiveness of proposed method  

Since Formation control have potentail applications in civil and military industries, decenterlized control of formation control is studied in this work using consensus algorithm. A specific robot quadrotor with 3D motion is used in this work. Quadrotor is an underactuated vehicle. First, we derivate twice from dynamical equations of linear positions. Hence, we can obtain appropriate form using linearization of output equations for design a consensus control algorithm. It is needed to design fourth order control algorithm for control of multiagent systems, beacause of twice derivation. Two methods that have been used for formation control in many works are potential function method and... 

In this project Deployment of multi-agent systems was studied. Maximum coverage over a point or curve or area is desired in deployment of multi-agent systems. A facility location optimization function was derived from geometrical concepts such as voronoi, n- geometric median and fermat-weber problem by optimization of which the deployment of multi-agent systems is performed. First, it is assumed that dynamic of agents is first order and second order .Next, it is assumed that agents are in a fluid. In all situations a suitable control algorithm was derived to optimize the facility location function to perform deployment. Next, another facility location function was derived by optimization... 

Nowadays, multi-agent robotic systems are implemented to perform various operations such as military mission, search and rescue operations, etc. One of the most interested robotic platforms for multi-agent systems is quadrotor aerial robot. In this paper, a team of quadrotors is prepared to perform a formation flight toward a specified target in order to catch and transport it on a desired path. Therefore, at first, trajectory tracking control of the quadrotor has been studied and two types of controllers have been introduced: Hierarchical controller and Non-hierarchical controller. Coordinate free structure of the hierarchical controller provides distinctive properties and guarantees... 

In recent years formation control of autonomous vehicles has been a well-studied topic, and the attention has shifted from the control of a single mobile robot to the control of multiple mobile robots because of the advantages a team of robots offer, such as increased efficiency, robustness against fault and damaging, and more systematic approaches to tasks like search and rescue operations, automated highways, survey and patrols, military missions, moving large objects and moving a large number of objects. Formation control means the problem of controlling the relative position and orientation of the mobile robots in a group according to some desired pattern for executing a given task. In... 

In the late 1980s, the International Maritime Organization started working on reducing air pollution by ships, and the result was the approval of Annex 6 of MARPOL and its mandatory implementation since 2005. Since then, due to the increasing importance of pollutant emissions in the maritime transport industry and the stricter regulations of the International Maritime Organization and the high cost of fuel for ships, ship owners are looking for ways to reduce fuel consumption. For this purpose, various activities related to reducing the fuel consumption of ships were carried out. Among these, the use of energy saving devices can be a solution. Recently, the hull vane, as a fixed underwater... 

Independent robots are equipped with various sound, inertia and visual sensors for decision making. Vision is an attractive sensor due to its non-invasive nature, passivity, and high information content. In natural environments, visual noises such as snow, rain, and dust distort images. in underwater environments, factors such as refraction and absorption of light suspended particles in the water, and color distortion affects the quality of visual data, resulting in noisy and distorted images. As a result, the autonomous underwater vehicles that rely on vision (AUVs) are challenged, resulting in poor performance. To improve the input to the visual algorithm for tracking the pipeline, in... 

Ship maneuverability is so important from different aspects. According to the regulations of International Maritime Organization (IMO), every vessel has to meet the minimum requirements of mentioned rules. Consequently, prediction of ship maneuverability in early stages of the ship design has become to one of the most necessary steps for shipbuilding and design companies. In this research work maneuvering of a high speed ship has been investigated using three different propulsive modes, considering propeller and rudder systems, azipod propeller and waterjet systems. First of all, hydrodynamics equations of each cases while considering different motion modes such as surge, sway, yaw, and roll... 

Regaining biomechanical function, comfort and quality of every-day life is a prime consideration when designing prosthetic devices for amputees. The magnetorheological (MR) prosthetic knee, which is the subject of this study, is an example of such a device. The study presents a comprehensive and a combined MR device design and MR fluid design approach, aiming to advance the MR prosthetic knee. First, this study focuses on developing a new configuration on magnetorheological (MR) brake damper as prosthetic knee. The new configuration is a rotary damper using MR fluid with a single rotary disc will act as a brake while MR fluid is activated by magnetic field in different walking gait. The main... 

Among different mechanisems for ambient energy harvesters, energy harvesting systems by means of magnetic shape memory alloys are noted due to their long life time, large strain amplitudes and the ability to operate at low frequencies. Strain change in these systems, changes the MSMA magnetization resulting change in the magnetic flux leading to inducing voltage by means of pickup coil. in the commercial systems, magnetic flux path is created by inserting an MSMA specimen in the air gap of ferromagnetic core and generation of bias magnetic field by means of the permanent magnet or electromagnet. In this proposed research, a thermodynamic based constitutive model is selected for the mdeling... 

Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) are a type of marine vehicles which are currently being used for exploration, maintenance, repairing of marine structures and military appliances. Unmanned underwater vehicles categorize in two types: ROVs and AUVs, ROVs (remotely operated vehicles) usually are connected to the mother vessel with a cable, conduction signals transfer through this cable and there is an operator in the control loop. The vehicle may be fed up with this cable, AUVs are modern underwater vehicles which the operator on controlling and conducting is removed, there is no connection between the vehicle and mother vessel, energy sources and controlling orders are set up in the... 

One of the key issues in the design of vessels is their proper stability and performance in waves. Therefore, the use of twin-hull vessel designs such as conventional catamaran and SWATH is suitable for improving stability and seakeeping quality. Although SWATH has a better seakeeping quality than a conventional catamaran, it has been observed that at high forward speeds, especially in head waves, the vertical motions of the vessel is greatly enhanced. Various methods such as correction of the hull form and the use of fin stabilizers can be used to modify SWATH vessel motion behavior. These control surfaces can respond appropriately to the dynamic forces from the waves, reducing the motions... 

Dynamic positioning system is a controller system used to maintain the position and heading of a vessel with no use of anchors, jack ups but only using the propellers installed on the vessel. A vessel has six degrees of freedom, including three rotations and three transfer. In dynamic positioning systems, the vessel is controlled only on the horizontal plane such that its position and heading are controlled according to predetermined values. To achieve this, position and heading of the vessel is determined and the controller system computes the direction and required power of each propeller. Preliminary systems utilized PID controllers. As the control science has advanced, model based... 

Harvesting energy from renewable sources in nature, such as wind energy, solar energy, water energy and vibrations has always attracted researchers. There exist different ways to harvest energy from environmental vibrations. In this thesis, energy harvesting via Magnetic Shape Memory Alloys (MSMAs) has been taken into account due to important advantages of these alloys, such as their long fatigue life and good performance at high amplitudes and low frequencies.In this system, applying strain on alloy changes the magnetization and this change generates voltage in the pick-up coil around the MSMA. On the other hand, since the strain-magnetization relation is nonlinear and hysteresis,... 

The electrical voltage, current and power output is calculated due to harmonic forced vibration of shell energy harvester. So five electromechanical equation together with Gauss equation is solved for doubly curve shell harvester in steady state condition in order to derive voltage, current and electric power output. The effect of shell curvature in cylindrical and spherical shells, the harvester series or parallel connection of layers and thickness of substrate and piezoelectric layer, is also considered in order to obtain maximum power output. The results show for small shell curvatures a high frequency load is needed to obtain maximum power and when the shell arc length is three times to... 

Magnetic shape memory alloys (MSMAs) are a new kind of smart materials which are great alternatives for energy harvesting systems due to some unmatched characteristics such as reversible large strain, high cycle fatigue and fast time response. In this work, an energy harvesting system using MSMA is studied. For this goal, a 3-D thermodynamic-based MSMA model is applied for predicting magnetomechanical behavior of the MSMA sample which is used in the energy harvester system. Since demagnetization effect, which has a great influence on the model’s outputs, has been neglected in the selected MSMA model, a new approach is presented for inserting demagnetization coefficients, regarding to the... 

large ships should only make very small horizontal movements at the berth for efficient loading. This is especially a concern in ports facing the open ocean directly, where high swells at sea can cause harbor oscillations and low-frequency surge motions of the ship. A developed mooring unit, the MoorMaster, which replaces conventional mooring lines is addressed here. The hydraulics of the system have a strong reducing effect on the motions of the moored ship. Measurements have shown that the surge motion of container ships was reduced from an amplitude in the order of 1 metre to an amplitude in the order of 5 centimetres, by using MoorMaster units. In here MoorMaster action is divided to two... 

Torque variations caused by intermittent combustion and inertia effects of reciprocating components, exert significant torsional excitation on crankshaft of internal combustion engines. These excitation induces considerable torsional vibration on crankshafts. Therefore, modeling and analysis of crankshaft torsional vibration and absorber systems, especially in automobiles engine that crankshaft tolerate high amplitude excitations coupled with heavy inertia effects has high importance. In this study, ability of centrifugal pendulum vibration absorber and dual mass flywheel which used in rotating machinery for vibration reduction, will be examined. At first, cranktrain will be torsionaly... 

Vibration based energy harvesting is the process of trapping and collecting vibrational energy from ambient sources which seem unusable at first sight. The smart materials with the capability of coupling two different fields can be used in converting vibrational energy to electrical one. One of this smart material which has been taken into account recently is the Magnetic Shape Memory Alloy (MSMA) and it can couple the magnetic and mechanical fields. In MSMAs the total magnetization vector changes with the application of stress and make it possible to harvest energy from Faraday law’s of induction. An important phenomena that exist in MSMA is the dependency of magnetization-strain behavior...