Neural Network-Based Adaptive Control for Spacecraft Under Actuator Failures and Input Saturations

In this article, we develop attitude tracking control methods for spacecraft as rigid bodies against model uncertainties, external disturbances, subsystem faults/failures, and limited resources. A new intelligent control algorithm is proposed using approximations based on radial basis function neural networks (RBFNNs) and adopting the tunable parameter-based variable structure (TPVS) control techniques. By choosing different adaptation parameters elaborately, a series of control strategies are constructed to handle the challenging effects due to actuator faults/failures and input saturations. With the help of the Lyapunov theory, we show that our proposed methods guarantee both finite-time convergence and fault-tolerance capability of the closed-loop systems. Finally, benefits of the proposed control methods are illustrated through five numerical examples

An Event-Triggered Robust Attitude Control of Flexible Spacecraft With Modified Rodrigues Parameters Under Limited Communication

The attitude regulation of spacecraft using continuous time execution of the control law is not always affordable for the low-cost satellites with limited wireless resources. Of late, within the ambit of control of systems over networks, event-triggered control has proved to be instrumental in ensuring acceptable closed-loop performance while respecting bandwidth constraints of the underlying network. Aligned with these design objectives, a robust event-triggered attitude control algorithm is proposed to regulate the orientation of a flexible spacecraft subjected to parametric uncertainties, external disturbances, and vibrations due to flexible appendages. The control law is developed using a state-dependent single feedback vector, which further assists in obeying the constrained network. The current information of this vector is updated to the onboard controller only when the predefined triggering condition is satisfied. Thus, the control input is updated through communication channel only when there is a need, which ultimately helps in saving the communication resources. The system trajectories, under the proposed approach, are guaranteed to be uniformly ultimately bounded (UUB) in a small neighborhood of origin by using a high gain. Moreover, the practical applicability of the proposed scheme is also proved by showing the Zeno free behavior in the proposed control, i.e., it avoids the accumulation of the triggering sequence. The numerical simulations results are indeed encouraging and illustrate the effectiveness of the designed controller. Moreover, the numerical comparative analysis shows that the proposed approach performs better than periodically sampled data technique and sliding mode-based event-triggered technique.Qatar UniversityScopu

Fault Diagnosis and Fault-Tolerant Control of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

With the increasing demand for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in both military and civilian applications, critical safety issues need to be specially considered in order to make better and wider use of them. UAVs are usually employed to work in hazardous and complex environments, which may seriously threaten the safety and reliability of UAVs. Therefore, the safety and reliability of UAVs are becoming imperative for development of advanced intelligent control systems. The key challenge now is the lack of fully autonomous and reliable control techniques in face of different operation conditions and sophisticated environments. Further development of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) control systems is required to be reliable in the presence of system component faults and to be insensitive to model uncertainties and external environmental disturbances. This thesis research aims to design and develop novel control schemes for UAVs with consideration of all the factors that may threaten their safety and reliability. A novel adaptive sliding mode control (SMC) strategy is proposed to accommodate model uncertainties and actuator faults for an unmanned quadrotor helicopter. Compared with the existing adaptive SMC strategies in the literature, the proposed adaptive scheme can tolerate larger actuator faults without stimulating control chattering due to the use of adaptation parameters in both continuous and discontinuous control parts. Furthermore, a fuzzy logic-based boundary layer and a nonlinear disturbance observer are synthesized to further improve the capability of the designed control scheme for tolerating model uncertainties, actuator faults, and unknown external disturbances while preventing overestimation of the adaptive control parameters and suppressing the control chattering effect. Then, a cost-effective fault estimation scheme with a parallel bank of recurrent neural networks (RNNs) is proposed to accurately estimate actuator fault magnitude and an active fault-tolerant control (FTC) framework is established for a closed-loop quadrotor helicopter system. Finally, a reconfigurable control allocation approach is combined with adaptive SMC to achieve the capability of tolerating complete actuator failures with application to a modified octorotor helicopter. The significance of this proposed control scheme is that the stability of the closed-loop system is theoretically guaranteed in the presence of both single and simultaneous actuator faults

Consensus tracking of nonlinear agents using distributed nonlinear dynamic inversion with switching leader-follower connection

In this paper, a consensus tracking protocol for nonlinear agents is presented, which is based on the Nonlinear Dynamic Inversion (NDI) technique. Implementation of such a technique is new in the context of the consensus tracking problem. The tracking capability of nonlinear dynamic inversion (NDI) is exploited for a leader-follower multi-agent scenario. We have provided all the mathematical details to establish its theoretical foundation. Additionally, a convergence study is provided to show the efficiency of the proposed controller. The performance of the proposed controller is evaluated in the presence of both (a) random switching topology among the agents and (b) random switching of leader–follower connections, which is realistic and not reported in the literature. The follower agents track various trajectories generated by a dynamic leader, which describes the tracking capability of the proposed controller. The results obtained from the simulation study show how efficiently this controller can handle the switching topology and switching leader-follower connections.Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC): EP/R009953/

Adaptive sliding mode fault-tolerant attitude control for flexible satellites based on T-S fuzzy disturbance modeling

This paper investigates the fault tolerance problem of flexible satellites subject to actuator faults and multiple disturbances. An adaptive sliding mode fault tolerant control (ASMFTC) approach based on Takagi-Sugeno (T-S) fuzzy disturbance observer (TSFDO) is presented for attitude control system (ACS) under loss of actuator effectiveness, environmental disturbance torque and elastic modal generated by flexible appendages. Compared with the traditional disturbance observer based control (DOBC) methods, the T-S fuzzy technology is applied to estimate the unknown nonlinear elastic modal. Then, the energy bounded disturbance is eliminated by designing an adaptive sliding mode controller. The proposed ASMFTC design can guarantee the sliding surface to approach zero. Finally, the effectiveness of the control method proposed in this paper is further verified by comparative simulation

Neural Network Observer-Based Prescribed-Time Fault-Tolerant Tracking Control for Heterogeneous Multiagent Systems With a Leader of Unknown Disturbances

This study investigates the prescribed-time leader-follower formation strategy for heterogeneous multiagent sys-tems including unmanned aerial vehicles and unmanned ground vehicles under time-varying actuator faults and unknown dis-turbances based on adaptive neural network observers and backstepping method. Compared with the relevant works, the matching and mismatched disturbances of the leader agent are further taken into account in this study. A distributed fixed-time observer is developed for follower agents in order to timely obtain the position and velocity states of the leader, in which neural networks are employed to approximate the unknown disturbances. Furthermore, the actual sensor limitations make each follower only affected by local information and measurable local states. As a result, another fixed-time neural network observer is proposed to obtain the unknown states and the complex uncertainties. Then, a backstepping prescribed-time fault-tolerant formation controller is constructed by utilizing the estimations, which not only guarantees that the multiagent systems realize the desired formation configuration in a user-assignable finite time, but also ensures that the control action can be smooth everywhere. Finally, simulation examples are designed to testify the validity of the developed theoretical method

An adaptive type-2 fuzzy sliding mode tracking controller for a robotic manipulator

With the wide application of intelligent manufacturing and the development of diversified functions of industrial manipulator, the requirements for the control accuracy and stability of the manipulator servo system are also increasing. The control of industrial manipulator is a time-varying system with nonlinear and strong coupling, which is often affected by uncertain factors, including parameter changing, environmental interference, joint friction and so on. Aiming at the problem of the poor control accuracy of the manipulator. Under the complex disturbance environment, control accuracy of the manipulator will be greatly affected, so this paper proposes an adaptive type-2 fuzzy sliding mode control (AT2FSMC) method applied to the servo control of the industrial manipulator, which realizes the adaptive adjustment of the boundary layer thickness to suppress the trajectory error caused by the external disturbance and weakens the chattering problem of the sliding mode control. The simulation results on a two-axis manipulator indicate that, with the presence of external disturbances, the proposed control method can help the manipulator maintain control signal stability and improve tracking accuracy. It also suppressed chattering produced by sliding mode control (SMC) and strengthening the robustness of the system. Compared with other conventional trajectory tracking control methods, the effectiveness of the proposed method can be reflected. Finally, the proposed method is tested in an actual manipulator to complete a practical trajectory to prove its feasibility

Advances in Spacecraft Systems and Orbit Determination

"Advances in Spacecraft Systems and Orbit Determinations", discusses the development of new technologies and the limitations of the present technology, used for interplanetary missions. Various experts have contributed to develop the bridge between present limitations and technology growth to overcome the limitations. Key features of this book inform us about the orbit determination techniques based on a smooth research based on astrophysics. The book also provides a detailed overview on Spacecraft Systems including reliability of low-cost AOCS, sliding mode controlling and a new view on attitude controller design based on sliding mode, with thrusters. It also provides a technological roadmap for HVAC optimization. The book also gives an excellent overview of resolving the difficulties for interplanetary missions with the comparison of present technologies and new advancements. Overall, this will be very much interesting book to explore the roadmap of technological growth in spacecraft systems

A Deep Learning-Based Fault Diagnosis of Leader-Following Systems

This paper develops a multisensor data fusion-based deep learning algorithm to locate and classify faults in a leader-following multiagent system. First, sequences of one-dimensional data collected from multiple sensors of followers are fused into a two-dimensional image. Then, the image is employed to train a convolution neural network with a batch normalisation layer. The trained network can locate and classify three typical fault types: the actuator limitation fault, the sensor failure and the communication failure. Moreover, faults can exist in both leaders and followers, and the faults in leaders can be identified through data from followers, indicating that the developed deep learning fault diagnosis is distributed. The effectiveness of the deep learning-based fault diagnosis algorithm is demonstrated via Quanser Servo 2 rotating inverted pendulums with a leader-follower protocol. From the experimental results, the fault classification accuracy can reach 98.9%