Control issues of microgravity vibration isolation

Active vibration isolation systems contemplated for microgravity space experiments may be designed to reach given performance requirements in a variety of ways. An analogy to passive isolation systems proves to be illustrative but lacks the flexibility as a design tool of a control systems approach and may lead to poor design. Control theory as applied to vibration isolation is reviewed and passive analogies discussed

Tools for Nonlinear Control Systems Design

This is a brief statement of the research progress made on Grant NAG2-243 titled "Tools for Nonlinear Control Systems Design", which ran from 1983 till December 1996. The initial set of PIs on the grant were C. A. Desoer, E. L. Polak and myself (for 1983). From 1984 till 1991 Desoer and I were the Pls and finally I was the sole PI from 1991 till the end of 1996. The project has been an unusually longstanding and extremely fruitful partnership, with many technical exchanges, visits, workshops and new avenues of investigation begun on this grant. There were student visits, long term.visitors on the grant and many interesting joint projects. In this final report I will only give a cursory description of the technical work done on the grant, since there was a tradition of annual progress reports and a proposal for the succeeding year. These progress reports cum proposals are attached as Appendix A to this report. Appendix B consists of papers by me and my students as co-authors sorted chronologically. When there are multiple related versions of a paper, such as a conference version and journal version they are listed together. Appendix C consists of papers by Desoer and his students as well as 'solo' publications by other researchers supported on this grant similarly chronologically sorted

Active vibration control in linear time-invariant and nonlinear systems

Active vibration control techniques are widely used in linear time-invariant and nonlinear systems. However, there still exist many difficulties in the application of conventional active vibration control techniques, including the following: (1) In application, some of the degrees of freedom may not be physically accessible to actuation and sensing simultaneously; (2) large flexible structures are difficult in terms of isolating one substructure from the vibration of another; (3) the incomplete understanding of the effects of softening nonlinearity may put conventional active controllers at risk; and (4) global stability of under-actuated nonlinear aeroelastic systems, resulting from actuator failure or motivated by weight and cost constraints imposed on next-generation flight vehicles, is extremely challenging, especially in the case of uncertainty and external disturbances. These intellectual challenges are addressed in this research by linear and nonlinear active control techniques. A new theory for partial pole placement by the method of receptances in the presence of inaccessible degrees of freedom is proposed. By the application of a new double input control and orthogonality conditions on the input and feedback gain vectors, partial pole placement is achieved in a linear fashion while some chosen degrees of freedom are free from both actuation and sensing. A lower bound on the maximum number of degrees of freedom inaccessible to both actuation and sensing is established. A theoretical study is presented on the feasibility of applying active control for the purpose of simultaneous vibration isolation and suppression in large flexible structures by block diagonalisation of the system matrices and at the same time assigning eigenvalues to the chosen substructures separately. The methodology, based on eigenstructure assignment using the method of receptances, is found to work successfully when the open-loop system, with lumped or banded mass matrix, is controllable. A comprehensive study of the effects of softening structural nonlinearity in aeroelastic systems is carried out using the simple example of a pitch-flap wing, with softening cubic nonlinearity in the pitch stiffness. Complex dynamical behaviour, including stable and unstable limit cycles and chaos, is revealed using sinusoidal-input describing functions and numerical integration in the time domain. Bifurcation analysis is undertaken using numerical continuation methods to reveal Hopf, symmetry breaking, fold and period doubling bifurcations. The effects of initial conditions on the system stability and the destabilising effects of softening nonlinearity on aerodynamic responses are considered. The global stability of an under-actuated wing section with torsional nonlinearity, softening or hardening, is addressed using a robust passivity-based continuous sliding-mode control approach. The controller is shown to be capable of stabilising the system in the presence of large matched and mismatched uncertainties and large input disturbance. With known bounds on the input disturbance and nonlinearity uncertainty, the continuous control input is able to globally stabilise the overall system if the zero dynamics of the system are globally exponentially stable. The merits and performance of the proposed methods are exemplified in a series of numerical case studies

Magnetic Actuators and Suspension for Space Vibration Control

The research on microgravity vibration isolation performed at the University of Virginia is summarized. This research on microgravity vibration isolation was focused in three areas: (1) the development of new actuators for use in microgravity isolation; (2) the design of controllers for multiple-degree-of-freedom active isolation; and (3) the construction of a single-degree-of-freedom test rig with umbilicals. Described are the design and testing of a large stroke linear actuator; the conceptual design and analysis of a redundant coarse-fine six-degree-of-freedom actuator; an investigation of the control issues of active microgravity isolation; a methodology for the design of multiple-degree-of-freedom isolation control systems using modern control theory; and the design and testing of a single-degree-of-freedom test rig with umbilicals

Multi-User Signal and Spectra Coordination for Digital Subscriber Lines

The appetite amongst consumers for ever higher data-rates seems insatiable. This booming market presents a huge opportunity for telephone and cable operators. It also presents a challenge: the delivery of broadband services to millions of customers across sparsely populated areas. Fully fibre-based networks, whilst technically the most advanced solution, are prohibitively expensive to deploy. Digital subscriber lines (DSL) provide an alternative solution. Seen as a stepping-stone to a fully fibre-based network, DSL operates over telephone lines that are already in place, minimizing the cost of deployment. The basic principle behind DSL technology is to increase data-rate by widening the transmission bandwidth. Unfortunately, operating at high frequencies, in a medium originally designed for voice-band transmission, leads to crosstalk between the different DSLs. Crosstalk is typically 10-15 dB larger than the background noise and is the dominant source of performance degradation in DSL. This thesis develops practical multi-user techniques for mitigating crosstalk in DSL. The techniques proposed have low complexity, low latency, and are compatible with existing customer premises equipment (CPE). In addition to being practical, the techniques also yield near-optimal performance, operating close to the theoretical multi-user channel capacity. Multi-user techniques are based on the coordination of the different users in a network, and this can be done on either a spectral or signal level

Industrial Robotics

This book covers a wide range of topics relating to advanced industrial robotics, sensors and automation technologies. Although being highly technical and complex in nature, the papers presented in this book represent some of the latest cutting edge technologies and advancements in industrial robotics technology. This book covers topics such as networking, properties of manipulators, forward and inverse robot arm kinematics, motion path-planning, machine vision and many other practical topics too numerous to list here. The authors and editor of this book wish to inspire people, especially young ones, to get involved with robotic and mechatronic engineering technology and to develop new and exciting practical applications, perhaps using the ideas and concepts presented herein