A probabilistic approach to model-based adaptive control for damping of interarea oscillations

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Evolved embodied phase coordination enables robust quadruped robot locomotion

Overcoming robotics challenges in the real world requires resilient control systems capable of handling a multitude of environments and unforeseen events. Evolutionary optimization using simulations is a promising way to automatically design such control systems, however, if the disparity between simulation and the real world becomes too large, the optimization process may result in dysfunctional real-world behaviors. In this paper, we address this challenge by considering embodied phase coordination in the evolutionary optimization of a quadruped robot controller based on central pattern generators. With this method, leg phases, and indirectly also inter-leg coordination, are influenced by sensor feedback.By comparing two very similar control systems we gain insight into how the sensory feedback approach affects the evolved parameters of the control system, and how the performances differs in simulation, in transferal to the real world, and to different real-world environments. We show that evolution enables the design of a control system with embodied phase coordination which is more complex than previously seen approaches, and that this system is capable of controlling a real-world multi-jointed quadruped robot.The approach reduces the performance discrepancy between simulation and the real world, and displays robustness towards new environments.Comment: 9 page

Investigation of Air Transportation Technology at Princeton University, 1989-1990

The Air Transportation Technology Program at Princeton University proceeded along six avenues during the past year: microburst hazards to aircraft; machine-intelligent, fault tolerant flight control; computer aided heuristics for piloted flight; stochastic robustness for flight control systems; neural networks for flight control; and computer aided control system design. These topics are briefly discussed, and an annotated bibliography of publications that appeared between January 1989 and June 1990 is given

Pointing Without a Pointer

We present a method for performing selection tasks based on continuous control of multiple, competing agents who try to determine the user's intentions from their control behaviour without requiring an explicit pointer. The entropy in the selection process decreases in a continuous fashion -- we provide experimental evidence of selection from 500 initial targets. The approach allows adaptation over time to best make use of the multimodal communication channel between the human and the system. This general approach is well suited to mobile and wearable applications, shared displays and security conscious settings

The Evolution of Reaction-diffusion Controllers for Minimally Cognitive Agents

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Model-based versus model-free control designs for improving microalgae growth in a closed photobioreactor: Some preliminary comparisons

Controlling microalgae cultivation, i.e., a crucial industrial topic today, is a challenging task since the corresponding modeling is complex, highly uncertain and time-varying. A model-free control setting is therefore introduced in order to ensure a high growth of microalgae in a continuous closed photobioreactor. Computer simulations are displayed in order to compare this design to an input-output feedback linearizing control strategy, which is widely used in the academic literature on photobioreactors. They assess the superiority of the model-free standpoint both in terms of performances and implementation simplicity.Comment: The 24th Mediterranean Conference on Control and Automation (MED'16), Athens, Greece (June 21-24, 2016