A Survey on Multisensor Fusion and Consensus Filtering for Sensor Networks

Multisensor fusion and consensus filtering are two fascinating subjects in the research of sensor networks. In this survey, we will cover both classic results and recent advances developed in these two topics. First, we recall some important results in the development ofmultisensor fusion technology. Particularly, we pay great attention to the fusion with unknown correlations, which ubiquitously exist in most of distributed filtering problems. Next, we give a systematic review on several widely used consensus filtering approaches. Furthermore, some latest progress on multisensor fusion and consensus filtering is also presented. Finally, conclusions are drawn and several potential future research directions are outlined.the Royal Society of the UK, the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grants 61329301, 61374039, 61304010, 11301118, and 61573246, the Hujiang Foundation of China under Grants C14002 and D15009, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation of Germany, and the Innovation Fund Project for Graduate Student of Shanghai under Grant JWCXSL140

Simple Approximations of Semialgebraic Sets and their Applications to Control

Many uncertainty sets encountered in control systems analysis and design can be expressed in terms of semialgebraic sets, that is as the intersection of sets described by means of polynomial inequalities. Important examples are for instance the solution set of linear matrix inequalities or the Schur/Hurwitz stability domains. These sets often have very complicated shapes (non-convex, and even non-connected), which renders very difficult their manipulation. It is therefore of considerable importance to find simple-enough approximations of these sets, able to capture their main characteristics while maintaining a low level of complexity. For these reasons, in the past years several convex approximations, based for instance on hyperrect-angles, polytopes, or ellipsoids have been proposed. In this work, we move a step further, and propose possibly non-convex approximations , based on a small volume polynomial superlevel set of a single positive polynomial of given degree. We show how these sets can be easily approximated by minimizing the L1 norm of the polynomial over the semialgebraic set, subject to positivity constraints. Intuitively, this corresponds to the trace minimization heuristic commonly encounter in minimum volume ellipsoid problems. From a computational viewpoint, we design a hierarchy of linear matrix inequality problems to generate these approximations, and we provide theoretically rigorous convergence results, in the sense that the hierarchy of outer approximations converges in volume (or, equivalently, almost everywhere and almost uniformly) to the original set. Two main applications of the proposed approach are considered. The first one aims at reconstruction/approximation of sets from a finite number of samples. In the second one, we show how the concept of polynomial superlevel set can be used to generate samples uniformly distributed on a given semialgebraic set. The efficiency of the proposed approach is demonstrated by different numerical examples

Robust explicit model predictive control for hybrid linear systems with parameter uncertainties

Explicit model-predictive control (MPC) is a widely used control design method that employs optimization tools to find control policies offline; commonly it is posed as a semi-definite program (SDP) or as a mixed-integer SDP in the case of hybrid systems. However, mixed-integer SDPs are computationally expensive, motivating alternative formulations, such as zonotope-based MPC (zonotopes are a special type of symmetric polytopes). In this paper, we propose a robust explicit MPC method applicable to hybrid systems. More precisely, we extend existing zonotope-based MPC methods to account for multiplicative parametric uncertainty. Additionally, we propose a convex zonotope order reduction method that takes advantage of the iterative structure of the zonotope propagation problem to promote diagonal blocks in the zonotope generators and lower the number of decision variables. Finally, we developed a quasi-time-free policy choice algorithm, allowing the system to start from any point on the trajectory and avoid chattering associated with discrete switching of linear control policies based on the current state's membership in state-space regions. Last but not least, we verify the validity of the proposed methods on two experimental setups, varying physical parameters between experiments

Guaranteed state estimation using a bundle of interval observers with adaptive gains applied to the induction machine

he scope of this paper is the design of an interval observer bundle for the guaranteed state estimation of an uncertain induction machine with linear, time-varying dynamics. These guarantees are of particular interest in the case of safety-critical systems. In many cases, interval observers provide large intervals for which the usability becomes impractical. Hence, based on a reduced-order hybrid interval observer structure, the guaranteed enclosure within intervals of the magnetizing current’s estimates is improved using a bundle of interval observers. One advantage of such an interval observer bundle is the possibility to reinitialize the interval observers at specified timesteps during runtime with smaller initial intervals, based on previously observed system states, resulting in decreasing interval widths. Thus, unstable observer dynamics are considered so as to take advantage of their transient behavior, whereby the overall stability of the interval estimation is maintained. An algorithm is presented to determine the parametrization of reduced-order interval observers. To this, an adaptive observer gain is introduced with which the system states are observed optimally by considering a minimal interval width at variable operating points. Furthermore, real-time capability and validation of the proposed methods are shown. The results are discussed with simulations as well as experimental data obtained with a test bench

Set-based state estimation and fault diagnosis using constrained zonotopes and applications

This doctoral thesis develops new methods for set-based state estimation and active fault diagnosis (AFD) of (i) nonlinear discrete-time systems, (ii) discrete-time nonlinear systems whose trajectories satisfy nonlinear equality constraints (called invariants), (iii) linear descriptor systems, and (iv) joint state and parameter estimation of nonlinear descriptor systems. Set-based estimation aims to compute tight enclosures of the possible system states in each time step subject to unknown-but-bounded uncertainties. To address this issue, the present doctoral thesis proposes new methods for efficiently propagating constrained zonotopes (CZs) through nonlinear mappings. Besides, this thesis improves the standard prediction-update framework for systems with invariants using new algorithms for refining CZs based on nonlinear constraints. In addition, this thesis introduces a new approach for set-based AFD of a class of nonlinear discrete-time systems. An affine parametrization of the reachable sets is obtained for the design of an optimal input for set-based AFD. In addition, this thesis presents new methods based on CZs for set-valued state estimation and AFD of linear descriptor systems. Linear static constraints on the state variables can be directly incorporated into CZs. Moreover, this thesis proposes a new representation for unbounded sets based on zonotopes, which allows to develop methods for state estimation and AFD also of unstable linear descriptor systems, without the knowledge of an enclosure of all the trajectories of the system. This thesis also develops a new method for set-based joint state and parameter estimation of nonlinear descriptor systems using CZs in a unified framework. Lastly, this manuscript applies the proposed set-based state estimation and AFD methods using CZs to unmanned aerial vehicles, water distribution networks, and a lithium-ion cell.Comment: My PhD Thesis from Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil. Most of the research work has already been published in DOIs 10.1109/CDC.2018.8618678, 10.23919/ECC.2018.8550353, 10.1016/j.automatica.2019.108614, 10.1016/j.ifacol.2020.12.2484, 10.1016/j.ifacol.2021.08.308, 10.1016/j.automatica.2021.109638, 10.1109/TCST.2021.3130534, 10.1016/j.automatica.2022.11042

Event-Based Control and Estimation with Stochastic Disturbances

This thesis deals with event-based control and estimation strategies, motivated by certain bottlenecks in the control loop. Two kinds of implementation constraints are considered: closing one or several control loops over a data network, and sensors that report measurements only as intervals (e.g. with quantization). The proposed strategies depend critically on _events_, when a data packet is sent or when a change in the measurement signal is received. The value of events is that they communicate new information about stochastic process disturbances. A data network in the control loop imposes constraints on the event timing, modelled as a minimum time between packets. A thresholdbased control strategy is suggested and shown to be optimal for firstorder systems with impulse control. Different ways to find the optimal threshold are investigated for single and multiple control loops sharing one network. The major gain compared to linear time invariant (LTI) control is with a single loop a greatly reduced communication rate, which with multiple loops can be traded for a similarly reduced regulation error. With the bottleneck that sensors report only intervals, both the theoretical and practical control problems become more complex. We focus on the estimation problem, where the optimal solution is known but untractable. Two simplifications are explored to find a realistic state estimator: reformulation to a mixed stochastic/worst case scenario and joint maximum a posteriori estimation. The latter approach is simplified and evaluated experimentally on a moving cart with quantized position measurements controlled by a low-end microcontroller. The examples considered demonstrate that event-based control considerably outperforms LTI control, when the bottleneck addressed is a genuine performance constraint on the latter

Nonlinear Set Membership Filter with State Estimation Constraints via Consensus-ADMM

This paper considers the state estimation problem for nonlinear dynamic systems with unknown but bounded noises. Set membership filter (SMF) is a popular algorithm to solve this problem. In the set membership setting, we investigate the filter problem where the state estimation requires to be constrained by a linear or nonlinear equality. We propose a consensus alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) based SMF algorithm for nonlinear dynamic systems. To deal with the difficulty of nonlinearity, instead of linearizing the nonlinear system, a semi-infinite programming (SIP) approach is used to transform the nonlinear system into a linear one, which allows us to obtain a more accurate estimation ellipsoid. For the solution of the SIP, an ADMM algorithm is proposed to handle the state estimation constraints, and each iteration of the algorithm can be solved efficiently. Finally, the proposed filter is applied to typical numerical examples to demonstrate its effectiveness

Exact Set-valued Estimation using Constrained Convex Generators for uncertain Linear Systems

Set-valued state estimation when in the presence of uncertainties in the model have been addressed in the literature essentially following three main approaches: i) interval arithmetic of the uncertain dynamics with the estimates; ii) factorizing the uncertainty into matrices with unity rank; and, iii) performing the convex hull for the vertices of the uncertainty space. Approach i) and ii) introduce a lot of conservatism because both disregard the relationship of the parameters with the entries of the dynamics matrix. On the other hand, approach iii) has a large growth on the number of variables required to represent the set or is approximated losing its main advantage in comparison with i) and ii). In this paper, with the application of autonomous vehicles in GPS-denied areas that resort to beacon signals for localization, we develop an exact (meaning no added conservatism) and optimal (smallest growth in the number of variables) closed-form definition for the convex hull of Convex Constrained Generators (CCGs). This results in a more efficient method to represent the minimum volume convex set corresponding to the state estimation. Given that reductions methods are still lacking in the literature for CCGs, we employ an approximation using ray-shooting that is comparable in terms of accuracy with methods for Constrained Zonotopes as the ones implemented in CORA. Simulations illustrate the greater accuracy of CCGs with the proposed convex hull operation in comparison to Constrained Zonotopes.Comment: IFAC paper to be presented at the World Congress in July 202

Techniques de détection de défauts à base d’estimation d’état ensembliste pour systèmes incertains

This thesis proposes a new Fault Detection approach for linear systems with interval uncertainties, bounded perturbations and bounded measurement noises. In this context, the Fault Detection is based on a set-membership state estimation of the system. The main contributions of this thesis are divided into three parts:- The first part proposes an improved method which combines the good accuracy of the zonotopic set-membership state estimation and the reduced complexity of the ellipsoidal set-membership estimation.- In the second part, a new ellipsoidal state estimation approach based on the minimization of the ellipsoidal radius is developed, leading to Linear Matrix Inequality optimization problems. In this context, both multivariable linear time-invariant systems and linear time-variant systems are considered. An extension of these approaches to systems with interval uncertainties is also proposed. - In the continuity of the previous approaches, two Fault Detection techniques have been proposed in the third part based on these set-membership estimation techniques. The first technique allows to detect sensor faults by checking the consistency between the model and the measurements. The second technique is based on Multiple Models. It deals with actuator/component/sensor faults in the same time. A Min-Max Model Predictive Control is developed in order to find the optimal control and the best model to use for the system in spite of the presence of these faults.Cette thèse propose une nouvelle approche de détection de défauts pour des systèmes linéaires soumis à des incertitudes par intervalles, des perturbations et des bruits de mesures bornés. Dans ce contexte, la détection de défauts est fondée sur une estimation ensembliste de l'état du système. Les contributions de cette thèse concernent trois directions principales :- La première partie propose une méthode d'estimation d'état ensembliste améliorée combinant l'estimation à base des zonotopes (qui offre une bonne précision) et l'estimation à base d'ellipsoïdes (qui offre une complexité réduite).- Dans la deuxième partie, une nouvelle approche d'estimation d'état ellipsoïdale fondée sur la minimisation du rayon de l'ellipsoïde est développée. Dans ce cadre, des systèmes multivariables linéaires invariants dans le temps, ainsi que des systèmes linéaires variants dans le temps ont été considérés. Ces approches, résolues à l'aide de problèmes d'optimisation sous la forme d'Inégalités Matricielles Linéaires, ont été étendues au cas des systèmes soumis à des incertitudes par intervalles.- Dans la continuité des approches précédentes, deux techniques de détection de défauts ont été proposées dans la troisième partie utilisant les méthodes d'estimation ensemblistes. La première technique permet de détecter des défauts capteur en testant la cohérence entre le modèle et les mesures. La deuxième technique fondée sur les modèles multiples permet de traiter simultanément les défauts actionneur/composant/capteur. Une commande prédictive Min-Max a été développée afin de déterminer la commande optimale et le meilleur modèle à utiliser pour le système, malgré la présence des différents défauts

Set-Membership Filtering Subject to Impulsive Measurement Outliers: A Recursive Algorithm

National Natural Science Foundation of China; China Postdoctoral Science Foundatio