Steering control for haptic feedback and active safety functions

Steering feedback is an important element that defines driver–vehicle interaction. It strongly affects driving performance and is primarily dependent on the steering actuator\u27s control strategy. Typically, the control method is open loop, that is without any reference tracking; and its drawbacks are hardware dependent steering feedback response and attenuated driver–environment transparency. This thesis investigates a closed-loop control method for electric power assisted steering and steer-by-wire systems. The advantages of this method, compared to open loop, are better hardware impedance compensation, system independent response, explicit transparency control and direct interface to active safety functions.The closed-loop architecture, outlined in this thesis, includes a reference model, a feedback controller and a disturbance observer. The feedback controller forms the inner loop and it ensures: reference tracking, hardware impedance compensation and robustness against the coupling uncertainties. Two different causalities are studied: torque and position control. The two are objectively compared from the perspective of (uncoupled and coupled) stability, tracking performance, robustness, and transparency.The reference model forms the outer loop and defines a torque or position reference variable, depending on the causality. Different haptic feedback functions are implemented to control the following parameters: inertia, damping, Coulomb friction and transparency. Transparency control in this application is particularly novel, which is sequentially achieved. For non-transparent steering feedback, an environment model is developed such that the reference variable is a function of virtual dynamics. Consequently, the driver–steering interaction is independent from the actual environment. Whereas, for the driver–environment transparency, the environment interaction is estimated using an observer; and then the estimated signal is fed back to the reference model. Furthermore, an optimization-based transparency algorithm is proposed. This renders the closed-loop system transparent in case of environmental uncertainty, even if the initial condition is non-transparent.The steering related active safety functions can be directly realized using the closed-loop steering feedback controller. This implies, but is not limited to, an angle overlay from the vehicle motion control functions and a torque overlay from the haptic support functions.Throughout the thesis, both experimental and the theoretical findings are corroborated. This includes a real-time implementation of the torque and position control strategies. In general, it can be concluded that position control lacks performance and robustness due to high and/or varying system inertia. Though the problem is somewhat mitigated by a robust H-infinity controller, the high frequency haptic performance remains compromised. Whereas, the required objectives are simultaneously achieved using a torque controller

Sensors Allocation and Observer Design for Discrete Bilateral Teleoperation Systems with Multi-Rate Sampling

This study addresses sensor allocation by analyzing exponential stability for discrete-time teleoperation systems. Previous studies mostly concentrate on the continuous-time teleoperation systems and neglect the management of significant practical phenomena, such as data-swap, the effect of sampling rates of samplers, and refresh rates of actuators on the system’s stability. A multi-rate sampling approach is proposed in this study, given the isolation of the master and slave robots in teleoperation systems which may have different hardware restrictions. This architecture collects data through numerous sensors with various sampling rates, assuming that a continuous-time controller stabilizes a linear teleoperation system. The aim is to assign each position and velocity signals to sensors with different sampling rates and divide the state vector between sensors to guarantee the stability of the resulting multi-rate sampled-data teleoperation system. Sufficient Krasovskii-based conditions will be provided to preserve the exponential stability of the system. This problem will be transformed into a mixed-integer program with LMIs (linear matrix inequalities). These conditions are also used to design the observers for the multi-rate teleoperation systems whose estimation errors converge exponentially to the origin. The results are validated by numerical simulations which are useful in designing sensor networks for teleoperation systems

Design of an Adaptive Super-Twisting Control for the Cart-Pole Inverted Pendulum System

A cart-pole inverted pendulum system is one of the underactuated systems that has been used in many applications. This research aims to study the design and the effectiveness of the Adaptive Super-Twisting controller to stabilize the system by comparing it with other previous control methods. A stabilization control of the pendulum upright using the Adaptive Super-Twisting algorithm (ASTA), was investigated. The proposed controller was designed based on the decoupling algorithm method to solve the coupled control input in the system model. We then compared the proposed stabilizing controller with first-order sliding mode control (FOSMC) and Super-Twisting algorithm (STA) in Matlab/Simulink simulation and realistic computer simulation. We developed the computer simulation using anyKode Marilou software, which adopted Open-Dynamic Engine (ODE) as a physics engine. In Matlab/Simulink simulation, we considered three different scenarios: a nominal system, a system with uncertainty, and a disturbed system. Meanwhile, in a computer simulation, we only presented the comparison of different controllers' performances for the realized system. Both results showed that the three controllers could stabilize the pendulum upright with a 0.1 rad initial angular position around the vertical axis. Under the same conditions, the ASTA and STA controllers had similar performances; they both have less chattering and faster convergence than the FOSMC approach. However, the FOSMC approach had the least energy delivered and smallest errors than the other two approaches

New Approaches in Automation and Robotics

The book New Approaches in Automation and Robotics offers in 22 chapters a collection of recent developments in automation, robotics as well as control theory. It is dedicated to researchers in science and industry, students, and practicing engineers, who wish to update and enhance their knowledge on modern methods and innovative applications. The authors and editor of this book wish to motivate people, especially under-graduate students, to get involved with the interesting field of robotics and mechatronics. We hope that the ideas and concepts presented in this book are useful for your own work and could contribute to problem solving in similar applications as well. It is clear, however, that the wide area of automation and robotics can only be highlighted at several spots but not completely covered by a single book

Distributed observer-based prescribed performance control for multi-robot deformable object cooperative teleoperation

In this paper, a distributed observer-based prescribed performance control method is proposed for using a multi-robot teleoperation system to manipulate a common deformable object. To achieve a stable position-tracking effect and realize the desired cooperative operational performance, we first define a new hybrid error matrix for both the relative distances and absolute positions of robots and then decompose the matrix into two new error terms for cooperative and independent robot control. Then, we improve the Kelvin-Voigt (K-V) contact model based on the new error terms. Because the center position and deformation of the object cannot be measured, the object dynamics are then expressed by the relative distances of robots and an equivalent impedance term. Each robot incorporates an observer to estimate contact force and object dynamics based on its own measurements. To address the position errors caused by biases in force estimation and realize the position-tracking effect of each robot, we improve the barrier Lyapunov functions (BLFs) by incorporating the errors into system control. which allows us to achieve a predefined position-tracking effect. We conduct an experiment to verify the proposed controller’s ability in a dual-telerobot cooperative manipulation task, even when the object is subjected to unknown disturbances. Note to Practitioners —This article is inspired by the limitations of multi-telerobot manipulation with a deformable object, where the deformation of the object cannot be measured directly. Meanwhile, force sensors, especially 6-axis force sensors, are very expensive. To realize the purpose that objects manipulated by multiple robots match the same state as operated on the leader side, we propose an object-centric teleoperation framework based on the estimates of contact forces and object dynamics and the improved barrier Lyapunov functions (BLFs). This framework contributes to two aspects in practice: 1) propose a control diagram for deformable object co-teleoperation of multi-robots for unmeasurable object’s centre position and deformation; 2) propose an improved BLFs controller based on the estimation of contact force and robot dynamics. The estimation errors are considered and transferred using an equivalent impedance to be integrated into the Lyapunov function to minimize both force and motion-tracking errors. The experimental results verify the effectiveness of the proposed method. The developed framework can be used in industrial applications with a similar scenario

Autonomous landing of fixed-wing aircraft on mobile platforms

E n esta tesis se propone un nuevo sistema que permite la operación de aeronaves autónomas sin tren de aterrizaje. El trabajo está motivado por el interés industrial en aeronaves con la capacidad de volar a gran altitud, con más capacidad de carga útil y capaces de aterrizar con viento cruzado. El enfoque seguido en este trabajo consiste en eliminar el sistema de aterrizaje de una aeronave de ala fija empleando una plataforma móvil de aterrizaje en tierra. La aeronave y la plataforma deben sincronizar su movimiento antes del aterrizaje, lo que se logra mediante la estimación del estado relativo entre ambas y el control cooperativo del movimiento. El objetivo principal de esta Tesis es el desarrollo de una solución práctica para el aterrizaje autónomo de una aeronave de ala fija en una plataforma móvil. En la tesis se combinan nuevos métodos con experimentos prácticos para los cuales se ha desarrollado un sistema de pruebas específico. Se desarrollan dos variantes diferentes del sistema de aterrizaje. El primero presta atención especial a la seguridad, es robusto ante retrasos en la comunicación entre vehículos y cumple procedimientos habituales de aterrizaje, al tiempo que reduce la complejidad del sistema. En el segundo se utilizan trayectorias optimizadas del vehículo y sincronización bilateral de posición para maximizar el rendimiento del aterrizaje en términos de requerimientos de longitud necesaria de pista, pero la estabilidad es dependiente del retraso de tiempo, con lo cual es necesario desarrollar un controlador estabilizador ampliado, basado en pasividad, que permite resolver este problema. Ambas estrategias imponen requisitos funcionales a los controladores de cada uno de los vehículos, lo que implica la capacidad de controlar el movimiento longitudinal sin afectar el control lateral o vertical, y viceversa. El control de vuelo basado en energía se utiliza para proporcionar dicha funcionalidad a la aeronave. Los sistemas de aterrizaje desarrollados se han analizado en simulación estableciéndose los límites de rendimiento mediante múltiples repeticiones aleatorias. Se llegó a la conclusión de que el controlador basado en seguridad proporciona un rendimiento de aterrizaje satisfactorio al tiempo que suministra una mayor seguridad operativa y un menor esfuerzo de implementación y certificación. El controlador basado en el rendimiento es prometedor para aplicaciones con una longitud de pista limitada. Se descubrió que los beneficios del controlador basado en el rendimiento son menos pronunciados para una dinámica de vehículos terrestres más lenta. Teniendo en cuenta la dinámica lenta de la configuración del demostrador, se eligió el enfoque basado en la seguridad para los primeros experimentos de aterrizaje. El sistema de aterrizaje se validó en diversas pruebas de aterrizaje exitosas, que, a juicio del autor, son las primeras en el mundo realizadas con aeronaves reales. En última instancia, el concepto propuesto ofrece importantes beneficios y constituye una estrategia prometedora para futuras soluciones de aterrizaje de aeronaves.In this thesis a new landing system is proposed, which allows for the operation of autonomous aircraft without landing gear. The work was motivated by the industrial need for more capable high altitude aircraft systems, which typically suffer from low payload capacity and high crosswind landing sensitivity. The approach followed in this work consists in removing the landing gear system from the aircraft and introducing a mobile ground-based landing platform. The vehicles must synchronize their motion prior to landing, which is achieved through relative state estimation and cooperative motion control. The development of a practical solution for the autonomous landing of an aircraft on a moving platform thus constitutes the main goal of this thesis. Therefore, theoretical investigations are combined with real experiments for which a special setup is developed and implemented. Two different landing system variants are developed — the safety-based landing system is robust to inter-vehicle communication delays and adheres to established landing procedures, while reducing system complexity. The performance-based landing system uses optimized vehicle trajectories and bilateral position synchronization to maximize landing performance in terms of used runway, but suffers from time delay-dependent stability. An extended passivity-based stabilizing controller was implemented to cope with this issue. Both strategies impose functional requirements on the individual vehicle controllers, which imply independent controllability of the translational degrees of freedom. Energy-based flight control is utilized to provide such functionality for the aircraft. The developed landing systems are analyzed in simulation and performance bounds are determined by means of repeated random sampling. The safety-based controller was found to provide satisfactory landing performance while providing higher operational safety, and lower implementation and certification effort. The performance-based controller is promising for applications with limited runway length. The performance benefits were found to be less pronounced for slower ground vehicle dynamics. Given the slow dynamics of the demonstrator setup, the safety-based approach was chosen for first landing experiments. The landing system was validated in a number of successful landing trials, which to the author’s best knowledge was the first time such technology was demonstrated on the given scale, worldwide. Ultimately, the proposed concept offers decisive benefits and constitutes a promising strategy for future aircraft landing solutions