Ship Course Following and Course Keeping in Restricted Waters Based on Model Predictive Control

Ship navigation safety in restricted water areas is of great concern to crew members, because ships sailing in close proximity to banks are significantly affected by the so-called ship-bank interaction. The purpose of this paper is to apply the optimal control theory to help helmsmen adjust ships’ course and maintain the target course in restricted waters. To achieve this objective, the motion of a very large crude carrier (VLCC) close to a bank is modeled with the linear equations of manoeuvring and the influence of bank effect on the ship hydrodynamic force is considered in the model. State-space framework is cast in a Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) system, where the offset-free model predictive control (MPC) is designed for course following and the linear quadratic regulator (LQR) is used for course keeping. Simulation results show that the control methods effectively work in ship course following and course keeping with varying ship-bank distances and water depths. The advantage of adopting speed variation as the second control input is obvious

Planning under uncertainty for dynamic collision avoidance

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2011.This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.Cataloged from student submitted PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 157-169).We approach dynamic collision avoidance problem from the perspective of designing collision avoidance systems for unmanned aerial vehicles. Before unmanned aircraft can fly safely in civil airspace, robust airborne collision avoidance systems must be developed. Instead of hand-crafting a collision avoidance algorithm for every combination of sensor and aircraft configurations, we investigate automatic generation of collision avoidance algorithms given models of aircraft dynamics, sensor performance, and intruder behavior. We first formulate the problem within the Partially Observable Markov Decision Process (POMDP) framework, and use generic MDP/POMDP solvers offline to compute vertical-only avoidance strategies that optimize a cost function to balance flight-plan deviation with risk of collision. We then describe a second framework that performs online planning and allows for 3-D escape maneuvers by starting with possibly dangerous initial flight plans and improving them iteratively. Experimental results with four different sensor modalities and a parametric aircraft performance model demonstrate the suitability of both approaches.by Selim Temizer.Ph.D

Design and validation of decision and control systems in automated driving

xxvi, 148 p.En la última década ha surgido una tendencia creciente hacia la automatización de los vehículos, generando un cambio significativo en la movilidad, que afectará profundamente el modo de vida de las personas, la logística de mercancías y otros sectores dependientes del transporte. En el desarrollo de la conducción automatizada en entornos estructurados, la seguridad y el confort, como parte de las nuevas funcionalidades de la conducción, aún no se describen de forma estandarizada. Dado que los métodos de prueba utilizan cada vez más las técnicas de simulación, los desarrollos existentes deben adaptarse a este proceso. Por ejemplo, dado que las tecnologías de seguimiento de trayectorias son habilitadores esenciales, se deben aplicar verificaciones exhaustivas en aplicaciones relacionadas como el control de movimiento del vehículo y la estimación de parámetros. Además, las tecnologías en el vehículo deben ser lo suficientemente robustas para cumplir con los requisitos de seguridad, mejorando la redundancia y respaldar una operación a prueba de fallos. Considerando las premisas mencionadas, esta Tesis Doctoral tiene como objetivo el diseño y la implementación de un marco para lograr Sistemas de Conducción Automatizados (ADS) considerando aspectos cruciales, como la ejecución en tiempo real, la robustez, el rango operativo y el ajuste sencillo de parámetros. Para desarrollar las aportaciones relacionadas con este trabajo, se lleva a cabo un estudio del estado del arte actual en tecnologías de alta automatización de conducción. Luego, se propone un método de dos pasos que aborda la validación de ambos modelos de vehículos de simulación y ADS. Se introducen nuevas formulaciones predictivas basadas en modelos para mejorar la seguridad y el confort en el proceso de seguimiento de trayectorias. Por último, se evalúan escenarios de mal funcionamiento para mejorar la seguridad en entornos urbanos, proponiendo una estrategia alternativa de estimación de posicionamiento para minimizar las condiciones de riesgo

Kinematics and Robot Design IV, KaRD2021

This volume collects the papers published on the special issue “Kinematics and Robot Design IV, KaRD2021” (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/robotics/special_issues/KaRD2021), which is the forth edition of the KaRD special-issue series, hosted by the open-access journal “MDPI Robotics”. KaRD series is an open environment where researchers can present their works and discuss all the topics focused on the many aspects that involve kinematics in the design of robotic/automatic systems. Kinematics is so intimately related to the design of robotic/automatic systems that the admitted topics of the KaRD series practically cover all the subjects normally present in well-established international conferences on “mechanisms and robotics”. KaRD2021, after the peer-review process, accepted 12 papers. The accepted papers cover some theoretical and many design/applicative aspects

Astronautics

Many people have had and still have misconceptions about the basic principle of rocket propulsion. Here is a comment of an unknown editorial writer of the renowned New York Times from January 13, 1920, about the pioneer of US astronautics, Robert Goddard, who at that time was carrying out the ?rst experiments with liquid propulsion engines: Professor Goddard … does not know the relation of action to reaction, and of the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react – to say that would be absurd. Of course he only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools

Motion Planning under Uncertainty for Autonomous Navigation of Mobile Robots and UAVs

This thesis presents a reliable and efficient motion planning approach based on state lattices for the autonomous navigation of mobile robots and UAVs. The proposal retrieves optimal paths in terms of safety and traversal time, and deals with the kinematic constraints and the motion and sensing uncertainty at planning time. The efficiency is improved by a novel graduated fidelity state lattice which adapts to the obstacles in the map and the maneuverability of the robot, and by a new multi-resolution heuristic which reduces the computational complexity. The motion planner also includes a novel method to reliably estimate the probability of collision of the paths considering the uncertainty in heading and the robot dimensions

Autonomous Flight, Fault, and Energy Management of the Flying Fish Solar-Powered Seaplane.

The Flying Fish autonomous unmanned seaplane is designed and built for persistent ocean surveillance. Solar energy harvesting and always-on autonomous control and guidance are required to achieve unattended long-term operation. This thesis describes the Flying Fish avionics and software systems that enable the system to plan, self-initiate, and autonomously execute drift-flight cycles necessary to maintain a designated watch circle subject to environmentally influenced drift. We first present the avionics and flight software architecture developed for the unique challenges of an autonomous energy-harvesting seaplane requiring the system to be: waterproof, robust over a variety of sea states, and lightweight for flight. Seaplane kinematics and dynamics are developed based on conventional aircraft and watercraft and upon empirical flight test data. These models serve as the basis for development of flight control and guidance strategies which take the form of a cyclic multi-mode guidance protocol that smoothly transitions between nested gain-scheduled proportional-derivative feedback control laws tuned for the trim conditions of each flight mode. A fault-tolerant airspeed sensing system is developed in response to elevated failure rates arising from pitot probe water ingestion in the test environment. The fault-tolerance strategy utilizes sensor characteristics and signal energy to combine redundant sensor measurements in a weighted voting strategy, handling repeated failures, sensor recovery, non-homogenous sensors, and periods of complete sensing failure. Finally, a graph-based mission planner combines models of global solar energy, local ocean-currents, and wind with flight-verified/derived aircraft models to provide an energy-aware flight planning tool. An NP-hard asymmetric multi-visit traveling salesman planning problem is posed that integrates vehicle performance and environment models using energy as the primary cost metric. A novel A* search heuristic is presented to improve search efficiency relative to uniform cost search. A series of cases studies are conducted with surface and airborne goals for various times of day and for multi-day scenarios. Energy-optimal solutions are identified except in cases where energy harvesting produces multiple comparable-cost plans via negative-cost cycles. The always-on cyclic guidance/control system, airspeed sensor fault management algorithm, and the nested-TSP heuristic for A* are all critical innovation required to solve the posed research challenges.Ph.D.Aerospace EngineeringUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/91453/1/eubankrd_1.pd

Commande sous contraintes de systèmes dynamiques multi-agents

The goal of this thesis is to propose solutions for the optimal control of multi-agent dynamical systems under constraints. Elements from control theory and optimization are merged together in order to provide useful tools which are further applied to different problems involving multi-agent formations. The thesis considers the challenging case of agents subject to dynamical constraints. To deal with these issues, well established concepts like set-theory, differential flatness, Model Predictive Control (MPC), Mixed-Integer Programming (MIP) are adapted and enhanced. Using these theoretical notions, the thesis concentrates on understanding the geometrical properties of the multi-agent group formation and on providing a novel synthesis framework which exploits the group structure. In particular, the formation design and the collision avoidance conditions are casted as geometrical problems and optimization-based procedures are developed to solve them. Moreover, considerable advances in this direction are obtained by efficiently using MIP techniques (in order to derive an efficient description of the non-convex, non-connected feasible region which results from multi-agent collision and obstacle avoidance constraints) and stability properties (in order to analyze the uniqueness and existence of formation configurations). Lastly, some of the obtained theoretical results are applied on a challenging practical application. A novel combination of MPC and differential flatness (for reference generation) is used for the flight control of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs).L'objectif de cette thèse est de proposer des solutions aux problèmes liés à la commande optimale de systèmes dynamiques multi-agents en présence de contraintes. Des éléments de la théorie de commande et d'optimisation sont appliqués à différents problèmes impliquant des formations de systèmes multi-agents. La thèse examine le cas d'agents soumis à des contraintes dynamiques. Pour faire face à ces problèmes, les concepts bien établis tels que la théorie des ensembles, la platitude différentielle, la commande prédictive (Model Predictive Control - MPC), la programmation mixte en nombres entiers (Mixed-Integer Programming - MIP) sont adaptés et améliorés. En utilisant ces notions théoriques, ce travail de thèse a porté sur les propriétés géométriques de la formation d'un groupe multi-agents et propose un cadre de synthèse original qui exploite cette structure. En particulier, le problème de conception de formation et les conditions d'évitement des collisions sont formulés comme des problèmes géométriques et d'optimisation pour lesquels il existe des procédures de résolution. En outre, des progrès considérables dans ce sens ont été obtenus en utilisant de façon efficace les techniques MIP (dans le but d'en déduire une description efficace des propriétés de non convexité et de non connexion d'une région de faisabilité résultant d'une collision de type multi-agents avec des contraintes d'évitement d'obstacles) et des propriétés de stabilité (afin d'analyser l'unicité et l'existence de configurations de formation de systèmes multi-agents). Enfin, certains résultats théoriques obtenus ont été appliqués dans un cas pratique très intéressant. On utilise une nouvelle combinaison de la commande prédictive et de platitude différentielle (pour la génération de référence) dans la commande et la navigation de véhicules aériens sans pilote (UAVs)

Robotics 2010

Without a doubt, robotics has made an incredible progress over the last decades. The vision of developing, designing and creating technical systems that help humans to achieve hard and complex tasks, has intelligently led to an incredible variety of solutions. There are barely technical fields that could exhibit more interdisciplinary interconnections like robotics. This fact is generated by highly complex challenges imposed by robotic systems, especially the requirement on intelligent and autonomous operation. This book tries to give an insight into the evolutionary process that takes place in robotics. It provides articles covering a wide range of this exciting area. The progress of technical challenges and concepts may illuminate the relationship between developments that seem to be completely different at first sight. The robotics remains an exciting scientific and engineering field. The community looks optimistically ahead and also looks forward for the future challenges and new development