MRSL: AUTONOMOUS NEURAL NETWORK-BASED SELF-STABILIZING SYSTEM

Stabilizing and localizing the positioning systems autonomously in the areas without GPS accessibility is a difficult task. In this thesis we describe a methodology called Most Reliable Straight Line (MRSL) for stabilizing and positioning camera-based objects in 3-D space. The camera-captured images are used to identify easy-to-track points “interesting points� and track them on two consecutive images. The distance between each of interesting points on the two consecutive images are compared and one with the maximum length is assigned to MRSL, which is used to indicate the deviation from the original position. To correct this our trained algorithm is deployed to reduce the deviation by issuing relevant commands, this action is repeated until MRSL converges to zero. To test the accuracy and robustness, the algorithm was deployed to control positioning of a Quadcopter. It was demonstrated that the Quadcopter (a) was highly robust to any external forces, (b) can fly even if the Quadcopter experiences loss of engine, (c) can fly smoothly and positions itself on a desired location

Quadcopter drone formation control via onboard visual perception

Quadcopter drone formation control is an important capability for fields like area surveillance, search and rescue, agriculture, and reconnaissance. Of particular interest is formation control in environments where radio communications and/or GPS may be either denied or not sufficiently accurate for the desired application. To address this, we focus on vision as the sensing modality. We train an Hourglass Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) to discriminate between quadcopter pixels and non-quadcopter pixels in a live video feed and use it to guide a formation of quadcopters. The CNN outputs "heatmaps" - pixel-by-pixel likelihood estimates of the presence of a quadcopter. These heatmaps suffer from short-lived false detections. To mitigate these, we apply a version of the Siamese networks technique on consecutive frames for clutter mitigation and to promote temporal smoothness in the heatmaps. The heatmaps give an estimate of the range and bearing to the other quadcopter(s), which we use to calculate flight control commands and maintain the desired formation. We implement the algorithm on a single-board computer (ODROID XU4) with a standard webcam mounted to a quadcopter drone. Flight tests in a motion capture volume demonstrate successful formation control with two quadcopters in a leader-follower setup

Deep Continuum Deformation Coordination and Optimization with Safety Guarantees

In this paper, we develop and present a novel strategy for safe coordination of a large-scale multi-agent team with ``\textit{local deformation}" capabilities. Multi-agent coordination is defined by our proposed method as a multi-layer deformation problem specified as a Deep Neural Network (DNN) optimization problem. The proposed DNN consists of $p$ hidden layers, each of which contains artificial neurons representing unique agents. Furthermore, based on the desired positions of the agents of hidden layer $k$ ($k=1,\cdots,p-1$), the desired deformation of the agents of hidden layer $k + 1$ is planned. In contrast to the available neural network learning problems, our proposed neural network optimization receives time-invariant reference positions of the boundary agents as inputs and trains the weights based on the desired trajectory of the agent team configuration, where the weights are constrained by certain lower and upper bounds to ensure inter-agent collision avoidance. We simulate and provide the results of a large-scale quadcopter team coordination tracking a desired elliptical trajectory to validate the proposed approach.Comment: 6 pages, accepted at ACC 202

Advantages of Fuzzy Control While Dealing with Complex/ Unknown Model Dynamics: A Quadcopter Example

Commonly, complex and uncertain plants cannot be faced through well-known linear approaches. Most of the time, complex controllers are needed to attain expected stability and robustness; however, they usually lack a simple design methodology and their actual implementation is difficult (if not impossible). Fuzzy logic control is an intelligent technique which, on its basis, allows the translation from logic statements to a nonlinear mapping. Although it has been proven to effectively deal with complex plants, many recent studies have moved away from the basic premise of linguistic interpretability. In this work, a simple fuzzy controller is designed in a clear way, privileging design easiness and logical consistency of linguistic operators. It is simulated together to a nonlinear model of a quadcopter with added actuators variability, so the robust operation of the controller is also proven. Uneven gain, bandwidth, and time-delay variations are applied among quadcopter’s motors, so the simulations results enclose those characteristics which could be found in reality. As those variations can be related to actuators’ performance, an analysis can be driven in terms of the features which are not commonly included in mathematical models like power electronics drives or electric machinery. These considerations may shorten the gap between simulation and actual implementation of the fuzzy controller. Briefly, this chapter presents a simple fuzzy controller which deals with a quadcopter plant as a first approach to intelligent control

Design and control of next-generation uavs for effectively interacting with environments

In this dissertation, the design and control of a novel multirotor for aerial manipulation is studied, with the aim of endowing the aerial vehicle with more degrees of freedom of motion and stability when interacting with the environments. Firstly, it presents an energy-efficient adaptive robust tracking control method for a class of fully actuated, thrust vectoring unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with parametric uncertainties including unknown moment of inertia, mass and center of mass, which would occur in aerial maneuvering and manipulation. The effectiveness of this method is demonstrated through simulation. Secondly, a humanoid robot arm is adopted to serve as a 6-degree-of-freedom (DOF) automated flight testing platform for emulating the free flight environment of UAVs while ensuring safety. Another novel multirotor in a tilt-rotor architecture is studied and tested for coping with parametric uncertainties in aerial maneuvering and manipulation. Two pairs of rotors are mounted on two independently-controlled tilting arms placed at two sides of the vehicle in a H configuration to enhance its maneuverability and stability through an adaptive robust control method. In addition, an impedance control algorithm is deployed in the out loop that modifies the trajectory to achieve a compliant behavior in the end-effector space for aerial drilling and screwing tasks

Simulated Annealing-Based Optimal Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) Controller Design: A Case Study on Nonlinear Quadcopter Dynamics

In this thesis, the history and evolution of rotor aircraft with simulated annealing-based PID application were reviewed and quadcopter dynamics are presented. The dynamics of a quadcopter were then modeled, analyzed, and linearized. A cascaded loop architecture with PID controllers was used to stabilize the plant dynamics, which was improved upon through the application of simulated annealing (SA). A Simulink model was developed to test the controllers and verify the functionality of the proposed control system design. In addition, the data that the Simulink model provided were compared with flight data to present the validity of derived dynamics as a proper mathematical model representing the true dynamics of the quadcopter system. Then, the SA-based global optimization procedure was applied to obtain optimized PID parameters. It was observed that the tuned gains through the SA algorithm produced a better performing PID controller than the original manually tuned one. Next, we investigated the uncertain dynamics of the quadcopter setup. After adding uncertainty to the gyroscopic effects associated with pitch-and-roll rate dynamics, the controllers were shown to be robust against the added uncertainty. A discussion follows to summarize SA-based algorithm PID controller design and performance outcomes. Lastly, future work on SA application on multi-input-multi-output (MIMO) systems is briefly discussed

An Inexpensive Flying Robot Design for Embodied Robotics Research

Flying insects are capable of a wide-range of flight and cognitive behaviors which are not currently understood. The replication of these capabilities is of interest to miniaturized robotics, because they share similar size, weight, and energy constraints. Currently, embodiment of insect behavior is primarily done on ground robots which utilize simplistic sensors and have different constraints to flying insects. This limits how much progress can be made on understanding how biological systems fundamentally work. To address this gap, we have developed an inexpensive robotic solution in the form of a quadcopter aptly named BeeBot. Our work shows that BeeBot can support the necessary payload to replicate the sensing capabilities which are vital to bees' flight navigation, including chemical sensing and a wide visual field-of-view. BeeBot is controlled wirelessly in order to process this sensor data off-board; for example, in neural networks. Our results demonstrate the suitability of the proposed approach for further study of the development of navigation algorithms and of embodiment of insect cognition