Intelligent control of a class of nonlinear systems

The objective of this study is to improve and propose new fuzzy control algorithms for a class of nonlinear systems. In order to achieve the objectives, novel stability theorems as well as modeling techniques are also investigated. Fuzzy controllers in this work are designed based on the fuzzy basis function neural networks and the type-2 Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy models. For a class of single-input single-output nonlinear systems, a new stability condition is derived to facilitate the design process of proportional-integral Mamdani fuzzy controllers. The stability conditions require a new technique to calculate the dynamic gains of nonlinear systems represented by fuzzy basis function network models. The dynamic gain of a fuzzy basis function network can be approximated by finding the maximum of norm values of the locally linearized systems or by solving a non-smooth optimal control problem. Based on the new stability theorem, a multilevel fuzzy controller with self-tuning algorithm is proposed and simulated in a tower crane control system. For a class of multi-input multi-output nonlinear systems with measurable state variables, a new method for modeling unstructured uncertainties and robust control of unknown nonlinear dynamic systems is proposed by using a novel robust Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy controller. First, a new training algorithm for an interval type-2 fuzzy basis function network is presented. Next, a novel technique is derived to convert the interval type-2 fuzzy basis function network to an interval type-2 Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy model. Based on the interval type-2 Takagi-Sugeno and type-2 fuzzy basis function network models, a robust controller is presented with an adjustable convergence rate. Simulation results on an electrohydraulic actuator show that the robust Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy controller can reduce steady-state error under different conditions while maintaining better responses than the other robust sliding mode controllers can. Next, the study presents an implementation of type-2 fuzzy basis function networks and robust Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy controllers to data-driven modeling and robust control of a laser keyhole welding process. In this work, the variation of the keyhole diameter during the welding process is approximated by a type-2 fuzzy-basis-function network, while the keyhole penetration depth is modelled by a type-1 fuzzy basis function network. During the laser welding process, a CMOS camera integrated with the welding system was used to provide a feedback signal of the keyhole diameter. An observer was implemented to estimate the penetration depth in real time based on the adaptive divided difference filter and the feedback signal from the camera. A robust Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy controller was designed based on the fuzzy basis function networks representing the welding process with uncertainties to adjust the laser power to ensure that the penetration depth of the keyhole is maintained at a desired value. Experimental results demonstrated that the fuzzy models provided an accurate estimation of both the welding geometry and its variations due to uncertainties, and the robust Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy controller successfully reduced the penetration depth variation and improved the quality of the welding process

Towards a novel biologically-inspired cloud elasticity framework

With the widespread use of the Internet, the popularity of web applications has significantly increased. Such applications are subject to unpredictable workload conditions that vary from time to time. For example, an e-commerce website may face higher workloads than normal during festivals or promotional schemes. Such applications are critical and performance related issues, or service disruption can result in financial losses. Cloud computing with its attractive feature of dynamic resource provisioning (elasticity) is a perfect match to host such applications. The rapid growth in the usage of cloud computing model, as well as the rise in complexity of the web applications poses new challenges regarding the effective monitoring and management of the underlying cloud computational resources. This thesis investigates the state-of-the-art elastic methods including the models and techniques for the dynamic management and provisioning of cloud resources from a service provider perspective. An elastic controller is responsible to determine the optimal number of cloud resources, required at a particular time to achieve the desired performance demands. Researchers and practitioners have proposed many elastic controllers using versatile techniques ranging from simple if-then-else based rules to sophisticated optimisation, control theory and machine learning based methods. However, despite an extensive range of existing elasticity research, the aim of implementing an efficient scaling technique that satisfies the actual demands is still a challenge to achieve. There exist many issues that have not received much attention from a holistic point of view. Some of these issues include: 1) the lack of adaptability and static scaling behaviour whilst considering completely fixed approaches; 2) the burden of additional computational overhead, the inability to cope with the sudden changes in the workload behaviour and the preference of adaptability over reliability at runtime whilst considering the fully dynamic approaches; and 3) the lack of considering uncertainty aspects while designing auto-scaling solutions. This thesis seeks solutions to address these issues altogether using an integrated approach. Moreover, this thesis aims at the provision of qualitative elasticity rules. This thesis proposes a novel biologically-inspired switched feedback control methodology to address the horizontal elasticity problem. The switched methodology utilises multiple controllers simultaneously, whereas the selection of a suitable controller is realised using an intelligent switching mechanism. Each controller itself depicts a different elasticity policy that can be designed using the principles of fixed gain feedback controller approach. The switching mechanism is implemented using a fuzzy system that determines a suitable controller/- policy at runtime based on the current behaviour of the system. Furthermore, to improve the possibility of bumpless transitions and to avoid the oscillatory behaviour, which is a problem commonly associated with switching based control methodologies, this thesis proposes an alternative soft switching approach. This soft switching approach incorporates a biologically-inspired Basal Ganglia based computational model of action selection. In addition, this thesis formulates the problem of designing the membership functions of the switching mechanism as a multi-objective optimisation problem. The key purpose behind this formulation is to obtain the near optimal (or to fine tune) parameter settings for the membership functions of the fuzzy control system in the absence of domain experts’ knowledge. This problem is addressed by using two different techniques including the commonly used Genetic Algorithm and an alternative less known economic approach called the Taguchi method. Lastly, we identify seven different kinds of real workload patterns, each of which reflects a different set of applications. Six real and one synthetic HTTP traces, one for each pattern, are further identified and utilised to evaluate the performance of the proposed methods against the state-of-the-art approaches

High performance position control for permanent magnet synchronous drives

In the design and test of electric drive control systems, computer simulations provide a useful way to verify the correctness and efficiency of various schemes and control algorithms before the final system is actually constructed, therefore, development time and associated costs are reduced. Nevertheless, the transition from the simulation stage to the actual implementation has to be as straightforward as possible. This document presents the design and implementation of a position control system for permanent magnet synchronous drives, including a review and comparison of various related works about non-linear control systems applied to this type of machine. The overall electric drive control system is simulated and tested in Proteus VSM software which is able to simulate the interaction between the firmware running on a microcontroller and analogue circuits connected to it. The dsPIC33FJ32MC204 is used as the target processor to implement the control algorithms. The electric drive model is developed using elements existing in the Proteus VSM library. As in any high performance electric drive system, field oriented control is applied to achieve accurate torque control. The complete control system is distributed in three control loops, namely torque, speed and position. A standard PID control system, and a hybrid control system based on fuzzy logic are implemented and tested. The natural variation of motor parameters, such as winding resistance and magnetic flux are also simulated. Comparisons between the two control schemes are carried out for speed and position using different error measurements, such as, integral square error, integral absolute error and root mean squared error. Comparison results show a superior performance of the hybrid fuzzy-logic-based controller when coping with parameter variations, and by reducing torque ripple, but the results are reversed when periodical torque disturbances are present. Finally, the speed controllers are implemented and evaluated physically in a testbed based on a brushless DC motor, with the control algorithms implemented on a dsPIC30F2010. The comparisons carried out for the speed controllers are consistent for both simulation and physical implementation

Towards a novel biologically-inspired cloud elasticity framework

With the widespread use of the Internet, the popularity of web applications has significantly increased. Such applications are subject to unpredictable workload conditions that vary from time to time. For example, an e-commerce website may face higher workloads than normal during festivals or promotional schemes. Such applications are critical and performance related issues, or service disruption can result in financial losses. Cloud computing with its attractive feature of dynamic resource provisioning (elasticity) is a perfect match to host such applications. The rapid growth in the usage of cloud computing model, as well as the rise in complexity of the web applications poses new challenges regarding the effective monitoring and management of the underlying cloud computational resources. This thesis investigates the state-of-the-art elastic methods including the models and techniques for the dynamic management and provisioning of cloud resources from a service provider perspective. An elastic controller is responsible to determine the optimal number of cloud resources, required at a particular time to achieve the desired performance demands. Researchers and practitioners have proposed many elastic controllers using versatile techniques ranging from simple if-then-else based rules to sophisticated optimisation, control theory and machine learning based methods. However, despite an extensive range of existing elasticity research, the aim of implementing an efficient scaling technique that satisfies the actual demands is still a challenge to achieve. There exist many issues that have not received much attention from a holistic point of view. Some of these issues include: 1) the lack of adaptability and static scaling behaviour whilst considering completely fixed approaches; 2) the burden of additional computational overhead, the inability to cope with the sudden changes in the workload behaviour and the preference of adaptability over reliability at runtime whilst considering the fully dynamic approaches; and 3) the lack of considering uncertainty aspects while designing auto-scaling solutions. This thesis seeks solutions to address these issues altogether using an integrated approach. Moreover, this thesis aims at the provision of qualitative elasticity rules. This thesis proposes a novel biologically-inspired switched feedback control methodology to address the horizontal elasticity problem. The switched methodology utilises multiple controllers simultaneously, whereas the selection of a suitable controller is realised using an intelligent switching mechanism. Each controller itself depicts a different elasticity policy that can be designed using the principles of fixed gain feedback controller approach. The switching mechanism is implemented using a fuzzy system that determines a suitable controller/- policy at runtime based on the current behaviour of the system. Furthermore, to improve the possibility of bumpless transitions and to avoid the oscillatory behaviour, which is a problem commonly associated with switching based control methodologies, this thesis proposes an alternative soft switching approach. This soft switching approach incorporates a biologically-inspired Basal Ganglia based computational model of action selection. In addition, this thesis formulates the problem of designing the membership functions of the switching mechanism as a multi-objective optimisation problem. The key purpose behind this formulation is to obtain the near optimal (or to fine tune) parameter settings for the membership functions of the fuzzy control system in the absence of domain experts’ knowledge. This problem is addressed by using two different techniques including the commonly used Genetic Algorithm and an alternative less known economic approach called the Taguchi method. Lastly, we identify seven different kinds of real workload patterns, each of which reflects a different set of applications. Six real and one synthetic HTTP traces, one for each pattern, are further identified and utilised to evaluate the performance of the proposed methods against the state-of-the-art approaches

Auto-scaling techniques for cloud-based Complex Event Processing

One key topic in cloud computing is elasticity, which is the ability of the cloud environment to timely adapt the resource assignment along with the workload demand. According to cloud on-demand model, the infrastructure should be able to scale up and down to unpredictable workloads, in order to achieve both a guaranteed service level and cost efficiency. This work addresses the cloud elasticity problem, with particular reference to the Complex Event Processing (CEP) systems. CEP systems are designed to process large volumes of event-driven data streams and continuously provide results with a low latency and in real-time. CEP systems need to adapt to changing query and events loads. Because of the high computational requirements and varying loads, CEP are distributed system and running on cloud infrastructures. In this work we review the cloud computing auto-scaling solutions, and study their suit- ability in the CEP model. We implement some solutions in a CEP prototype and evaluate the experimental results

Switching control systems and their design automation via genetic algorithms

The objective of this work is to provide a simple and effective nonlinear controller. Our strategy involves switching the underlying strategies in order to maintain a robust control. If a disturbance moves the system outside the region of stability or the domain of attraction, it will be guided back onto the desired course by the application of a different control strategy. In the context of switching control, the common types of controller present in the literature are based either on fuzzy logic or sliding mode. Both of them are easy to implement and provide efficient control for non-linear systems, their actions being based on the observed input/output behaviour of the system. In the field of fuzzy logic control (FLC) using error feedback variables there are two main problems. The first is the poor transient response (jerking) encountered by the conventional 2-dimensional rule-base fuzzy PI controller. Secondly, conventional 3-D rule-base fuzzy PID control design is both computationally intensive and suffers from prolonged design times caused by a large dimensional rule-base. The size of the rule base will increase exponentially with the increase of the number of fuzzy sets used for each input decision variable. Hence, a reduced rule-base is needed for the 3-term fuzzy controller. In this thesis a direct implementation method is developed that allows the size of the rule-base to be reduced exponentially without losing the features of the PID structure. This direct implementation method, when applied to the reduced rule-base fuzzy PI controller, gives a good transient response with no jerking

A robust maximum power point tracking control for PV panel using adaptive PI controller based on fuzzy logic

Most methods of maximum power point tracking (MPPT) for photovoltaic (PV) focus only on tracking performance while robustness against disturbances hasrarely been addressed. This paper proposes a new MPPT control method that provides robustness against direct current (DC) link voltage disturbance as well as good tracking performance. The method uses indirect MPPT control topology which incorporates two controllers. For the external controller, we use an adaptive proportional-integral (PI) control which is real-time tuned by fuzzy logic (FL). New membership functions and rule base are proposed using only one fuzzy input variable and 10 fuzzy rules. The internal controller is a PI controller. The PV panelis connected to a boost DC-DC converter. The proposed MPPT control iscompared with the fuzzy logic controller (FLC). Performance is evaluated under DC link voltage disturbance, steady-state condition, and rapid solar radiation changes. Simulation results indicate that the proposed method provides 41.2 % better robustness against DC link voltage disturbance as compared to the direct FLC. Experimental results under natural climate conditions with real solar radiation  validate that the proposed method works well in regulating the MPP at steady-state solar irradiance as well as in tracking the MPP towards rapid solar irradiance changes. It yields the PV power tracking speed of 95.75 W/s

Evolution engine technology in exhaust gas recirculation for heavy-duty diesel engine

In this present year, engineers have been researching and inventing to get the optimum of less emission in every vehicle for a better environmental friendly. Diesel engines are known reusing of the exhaust gas in order to reduce the exhaust emissions such as NOx that contribute high factors in the pollution. In this paper, we have conducted a study that EGR instalment in the vehicle can be good as it helps to prevent highly amount of toxic gas formation, which NOx level can be lowered. But applying the EGR it can lead to more cooling and more space which will affect in terms of the costing. Throughout the research, fuelling in the engine affects the EGR producing less emission. Other than that, it contributes to the less of performance efficiency when vehicle load is less

Development of an adaptive fuzzy logic controller for HVAC system

An adaptive approach to control a cooling coil chilled water valve operation, called adaptive fuzzy logic control (AFLC), is developed and validated in this study. The AFLC calculates the error between the supply air temperature and supply air temperature set point for air in an air handling unit (AHU) of a heating, ventilating, and air conditioning (HVAC) system and determines optimal fuzzy rule matrix to minimize the hydronic energy consumption while maintaining occupant comfort. The AFLC uses genetic algorithms and evolutionary strategies to determine the fuzzy rule matrix and fuzzy membership functions for an AHU in HVAC systems;Cooling coil models are developed using neural network, general regression neural network and lump capacitance methods to predict the supply air temperature. These models helped with the development of the adaptive fuzzy logic controller;Two types of validation experiments were conducted, one with cyclically changing supply air temperatures and the second with cyclically changing supply air flow rates. Experiments conducted on two identical real HVAC systems were used to compare the performances of the AFLC to a conventional proportional, integral and derivative (PID) controller. To remove bias between the testing systems, the controllers were switched from one system to the other;The validation experiments indicate that the HVAC system operated under the AFLC consumes 1 to 7 % less hydronic energy when compared with a conventional PID controlled system. More actuator travel distance was observed when using the AFLC. The AFLC maintained better occupant comfort conditions when compared with the conventional PID controller. It was observed that the controlled variable for the AFLC system required 0 to 185% more rise time, had 9 to 68% less overshoot and required 11 to 45% less settling time as compared to the conventional PID controlled system