A layered control architecture for mobile robot navigation

A Thesis submitted to the University Research Degree Committee in fulfillment ofthe requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in RoboticsThis thesis addresses the problem of how to control an autonomous mobile robot navigation in indoor environments, in the face of sensor noise, imprecise information, uncertainty and limited response time. The thesis argues that the effective control of autonomous mobile robots can be achieved by organising low level and higher level control activities into a layered architecture. The low level reactive control allows the robot to respond to contingencies quickly. The higher level control allows the robot to make longer term decisions and arranges appropriate sequences for a task execution. The thesis describes the design and implementation of a two layer control architecture, a task template based sequencing layer and a fuzzy behaviour based low level control layer. The sequencing layer works at the pace of the higher level of abstraction, interprets a task plan, mediates and monitors the controlling activities. While the low level performs fast computation in response to dynamic changes in the real world and carries out robust control under uncertainty. The organisation and fusion of fuzzy behaviours are described extensively for the construction of a low level control system. A learning methodology is also developed to systematically learn fuzzy behaviours and the behaviour selection network and therefore solve the difficulties in configuring the low level control layer. A two layer control system has been implemented and used to control a simulated mobile robot performing two tasks in simulated indoor environments. The effectiveness of the layered control and learning methodology is demonstrated through the traces of controlling activities at the two different levels. The results also show a general design methodology that the high level should be used to guide the robot's actions while the low level takes care of detailed control in the face of sensor noise and environment uncertainty in real time

Fuzzy Predictive Controller for Mobile Robot Path Tracking

IFAC Intelligent Components and Instruments for Control Applications, Annecy, France 1997This paper presents a way of implementing a Model Based Predictive Controller (MBPC) for mobile robot path-tracking. The method uses a non-linear model of mobile robot dynamics and thus allows an accurate prediction of the future trajectories. Constraints on the maximum attainable angular velocity is also considered by the algorithm. A fuzzy approach is used to implement the MBPC. The fuzzy controller has been trained using a lookup-table scheme, where the database of fuzzy-rules has been obtained automatically from a set of input-output training patterns, computed with the predictive controller. Experimental results obtained when applying the fuzzy controller to a TRC labmate mobile platform are given in the paper.Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología TAP95-0307Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología TAP96-884C

Life Cycle Based Sustainability Assessment And Decision Making For Industrial Systems

Increasing concern with the environmental impact resulted from human activities has led to a rising interest in sustainable development that will not only meet the needs of current development but also protect the natural environment without compromising the needs of future generations. This leads to the necessity of a systems approach to decision-making in which economic, environmental and social factors are integrated together to ensure the triple bottom lines of sustainability. Although current studies provide a variety of different methodologies to address sustainability assessment and decision-making, the increasing size and complexity of industrial systems results in the necessity to develop more comprehensive systems approaches to ensure the sustainable development over a long time period for industrial systems. What\u27s more, current research may conduct results based on one or only a few stages of the manufacturing process without considering all the stages of a product’s life. Therefore, the results could be bias and sometimes not feasible for the whole life-cycle. In the meanwhile, life cycle analysis (LCA) which has been widely adopted in a variety of industries does provide an effective approach to evaluate the environmental impact. The lack of life-cycle based economic and social sustainability assessment results in the difficult to conduct more comprehensive sustainability assessment. To address these challenges, three fundamental frameworks are developed in this dissertation, that is, life cycle based sustainability assessment (LCBSA) framework, life cycle based decision-making (LCBDM) framework, and fuzzy dynamic programming (FDP) based long-term multistage sustainable development framework. LCBSA can offer a profound insight of status quo of the sustainability performance over the whole life cycle. LCSA is then applied to assess the industrial system of automotive coating manufacturing process from raw material extraction, material manufacturing, product manufacturing to the recycle and disposal stage. The following LCBDM framework could then prioritize the sustainability improvement urgency and achieve comprehensive sustainable development by employing a two-phase decision-making methodology. In addition, FDP based long-term multistage sustainable development framework offers a comprehensive way to ascertain the achievement of long time sustainable development goal of complex and dynamic industrial systems by combining decision-making and sustainability assessment together

Real-Time Monitoring and Fault Diagnostics in Roll-To-Roll Manufacturing Systems

A roll-to-roll (R2R) process is a manufacturing technique involving continuous processing of a flexible substrate as it is transferred between rotating rolls. It integrates many additive and subtractive processing techniques to produce rolls of product in an efficient and cost-effective way due to its high production rate and mass quantity. Therefore, the R2R processes have been increasingly implemented in a wide range of manufacturing industries, including traditional paper/fabric production, plastic and metal foil manufacturing, flexible electronics, thin film batteries, photovoltaics, graphene films production, etc. However, the increasing complexity of R2R processes and high demands on product quality have heightened the needs for effective real-time process monitoring and fault diagnosis in R2R manufacturing systems. This dissertation aims at developing tools to increase system visibility without additional sensors, in order to enhance real-time monitoring, and fault diagnosis capability in R2R manufacturing systems. First, a multistage modeling method is proposed for process monitoring and quality estimation in R2R processes. Product-centric and process-centric variation propagation are introduced to characterize variation propagation throughout the system. The multistage model mainly focuses on the formulation of process-centric variation propagation, which uniquely exists in R2R processes, and the corresponding product quality measurements with both physical knowledge and sensor data analysis. Second, a nonlinear analytical redundancy method is proposed for sensor validation to ensure the accuracy of sensor measurements for process and quality control. Parity relations based on nonlinear observation matrix are formulated to characterize system dynamics and sensor measurements. Robust optimization is designed to identify the coefficient of parity relations that can tolerate a certain level of measurement noise and system disturbances. The effect of the change of operating conditions on the value of the optimal objective function – parity residuals and the optimal design variables – parity coefficients are evaluated with sensitivity analysis. Finally, a multiple model approach for anomaly detection and fault diagnosis is introduced to improve the diagnosability under different operating regimes. The growing structure multiple model system (GSMMS) is employed, which utilizes Voronoi sets to automatically partition the entire operating space into smaller operating regimes. The local model identification problem is revised by formulating it into an optimization problem based on the loss minimization framework and solving with the mini-batch stochastic gradient descent method instead of least squares algorithms. This revision to the GSMMS method expands its capability to handle the local model identification problems that cannot be solved with a closed-form solution. The effectiveness of the models and methods are determined with testbed data from an R2R process. The results show that those proposed models and methods are effective tools to understand variation propagation in R2R processes and improve estimation accuracy of product quality by 70%, identify the health status of sensors promptly to guarantee data accuracy for modeling and decision making, and reduce false alarm rate and increase detection power under different operating conditions. Eventually, those tools developed in this thesis contribute to increase the visibility of R2R manufacturing systems, improve productivity and reduce product rejection rate.PHDMechanical EngineeringUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/146114/1/huanyis_1.pd

A survey of AI in operations management from 2005 to 2009

Purpose: the use of AI for operations management, with its ability to evolve solutions, handle uncertainty and perform optimisation continues to be a major field of research. The growing body of publications over the last two decades means that it can be difficult to keep track of what has been done previously, what has worked, and what really needs to be addressed. Hence this paper presents a survey of the use of AI in operations management aimed at presenting the key research themes, trends and directions of research. Design/methodology/approach: the paper builds upon our previous survey of this field which was carried out for the ten-year period 1995-2004. Like the previous survey, it uses Elsevier’s Science Direct database as a source. The framework and methodology adopted for the survey is kept as similar as possible to enable continuity and comparison of trends. Thus, the application categories adopted are: design; scheduling; process planning and control; and quality, maintenance and fault diagnosis. Research on utilising neural networks, case-based reasoning (CBR), fuzzy logic (FL), knowledge-Based systems (KBS), data mining, and hybrid AI in the four application areas are identified. Findings: the survey categorises over 1,400 papers, identifying the uses of AI in the four categories of operations management and concludes with an analysis of the trends, gaps and directions for future research. The findings include: the trends for design and scheduling show a dramatic increase in the use of genetic algorithms since 2003 that reflect recognition of their success in these areas; there is a significant decline in research on use of KBS, reflecting their transition into practice; there is an increasing trend in the use of FL in quality, maintenance and fault diagnosis; and there are surprising gaps in the use of CBR and hybrid methods in operations management that offer opportunities for future research. Design/methodology/approach: the paper builds upon our previous survey of this field which was carried out for the 10 year period 1995 to 2004 (Kobbacy et al. 2007). Like the previous survey, it uses the Elsevier’s ScienceDirect database as a source. The framework and methodology adopted for the survey is kept as similar as possible to enable continuity and comparison of trends. Thus the application categories adopted are: (a) design, (b) scheduling, (c) process planning and control and (d) quality, maintenance and fault diagnosis. Research on utilising neural networks, case based reasoning, fuzzy logic, knowledge based systems, data mining, and hybrid AI in the four application areas are identified. Findings: The survey categorises over 1400 papers, identifying the uses of AI in the four categories of operations management and concludes with an analysis of the trends, gaps and directions for future research. The findings include: (a) The trends for Design and Scheduling show a dramatic increase in the use of GAs since 2003-04 that reflect recognition of their success in these areas, (b) A significant decline in research on use of KBS, reflecting their transition into practice, (c) an increasing trend in the use of fuzzy logic in Quality, Maintenance and Fault Diagnosis, (d) surprising gaps in the use of CBR and hybrid methods in operations management that offer opportunities for future research. Originality/value: This is the largest and most comprehensive study to classify research on the use of AI in operations management to date. The survey and trends identified provide a useful reference point and directions for future research

Multiobjective strategies for New Product Development in the pharmaceutical industry

New Product Development (NPD) constitutes a challenging problem in the pharmaceutical industry, due to the characteristics of the development pipeline. Formally, the NPD problem can be stated as follows: select a set of R&D projects from a pool of candidate projects in order to satisfy several criteria (economic profitability, time to market) while coping with the uncertain nature of the projects. More precisely, the recurrent key issues are to determine the projects to develop once target molecules have been identified, their order and the level of resources to assign. In this context, the proposed approach combines discrete event stochastic simulation (Monte Carlo approach) with multiobjective genetic algorithms (NSGAII type, Non-Sorted Genetic Algorithm II) to optimize the highly combinatorial portfolio management problem. In that context, Genetic Algorithms (GAs) are particularly attractive for treating this kind of problem, due to their ability to directly lead to the so-called Pareto front and to account for the combinatorial aspect. This work is illustrated with a study case involving nine interdependent new product candidates targeting three diseases. An analysis is performed for this test bench on the different pairs of criteria both for the bi- and tricriteria optimization: large portfolios cause resource queues and delays time to launch and are eliminated by the bi- and tricriteria optimization strategy. The optimization strategy is thus interesting to detect the sequence candidates. Time is an important criterion to consider simultaneously with NPV and risk criteria. The order in which drugs are released in the pipeline is of great importance as with scheduling problems

Multiobjective strategies for New Product Development in the pharmaceutical industry

New Product Development (NPD) constitutes a challenging problem in the pharmaceutical industry, due to the characteristics of the development pipeline. Formally, the NPD problem can be stated as follows: select a set of R&D projects from a pool of candidate projects in order to satisfy several criteria (economic profitability, time to market) while coping with the uncertain nature of the projects. More precisely, the recurrent key issues are to determine the projects to develop once target molecules have been identified, their order and the level of resources to assign. In this context, the proposed approach combines discrete event stochastic simulation (Monte Carlo approach) with multiobjective genetic algorithms (NSGAII type, Non-Sorted Genetic Algorithm II) to optimize the highly combinatorial portfolio management problem. In that context, Genetic Algorithms (GAs) are particularly attractive for treating this kind of problem, due to their ability to directly lead to the so-called Pareto front and to account for the combinatorial aspect. This work is illustrated with a study case involving nine interdependent new product candidates targeting three diseases. An analysis is performed for this test bench on the different pairs of criteria both for the bi- and tricriteria optimization: large portfolios cause resource queues and delays time to launch and are eliminated by the bi- and tricriteria optimization strategy. The optimization strategy is thus interesting to detect the sequence candidates. Time is an important criterion to consider simultaneously with NPV and risk criteria. The order in which drugs are released in the pipeline is of great importance as with scheduling problems