Space-Related Applications of Intelligent Control: Which Algorithm to Choose? (Theoretical Analysis of the Problem)

For a space mission to be successful it is vitally important to have a good control strategy. For example, with the Space Shuttle it is necessary to guarantee the success and smoothness of docking, the smoothness and fuel efficiency of trajectory control, etc. For an automated planetary mission it is important to control the spacecraft's trajectory, and after that, to control the planetary rover so that it would be operable for the longest possible period of time. In many complicated control situations, traditional methods of control theory are difficult or even impossible to apply. In general, in uncertain situations, where no routine methods are directly applicable, we must rely on the creativity and skill of the human operators. In order to simulate these experts, an intelligent control methodology must be developed. The research objectives of this project were: to analyze existing control techniques; to find out which of these techniques is the best with respect to the basic optimality criteria (stability, smoothness, robustness); and, if for some problems, none of the existing techniques is satisfactory, to design new, better intelligent control techniques

Fast Computation of Centroids for Constant-Width Interval-Valued Fuzzy Sets

Interval-valued fuzzy sets provide a more adequate description of uncertainty than traditional fuzzy sets; it is therefore important to use interval-valued fuzzy sets in applications. One of the main applications of fuzzy sets is fuzzy control, and one of the most computationally intensive part of fuzzy control is defuzzification. Since a transition to interval-valued fuzzy sets usually increases the amount of computations, it is vitally important to design faster algorithms for the corresponding defuzzification. In this paper, we provide such an algorithm for a practically important case of constant-width interval-valued fuzzy set

Reconfigurable Antenna Systems: Platform implementation and low-power matters

Antennas are a necessary and often critical component of all wireless systems, of which they share the ever-increasing complexity and the challenges of present and emerging trends. 5G, massive low-orbit satellite architectures (e.g. OneWeb), industry 4.0, Internet of Things (IoT), satcom on-the-move, Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) and Autonomous Vehicles, all call for highly flexible systems, and antenna reconfigurability is an enabling part of these advances. The terminal segment is particularly crucial in this sense, encompassing both very compact antennas or low-profile antennas, all with various adaptability/reconfigurability requirements. This thesis work has dealt with hardware implementation issues of Radio Frequency (RF) antenna reconfigurability, and in particular with low-power General Purpose Platforms (GPP); the work has encompassed Software Defined Radio (SDR) implementation, as well as embedded low-power platforms (in particular on STM32 Nucleo family of micro-controller). The hardware-software platform work has been complemented with design and fabrication of reconfigurable antennas in standard technology, and the resulting systems tested. The selected antenna technology was antenna array with continuously steerable beam, controlled by voltage-driven phase shifting circuits. Applications included notably Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) deployed in the Italian scientific mission in Antarctica, in a traffic-monitoring case study (EU H2020 project), and into an innovative Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) antenna concept (patent application submitted). The SDR implementation focused on a low-cost and low-power Software-defined radio open-source platform with IEEE 802.11 a/g/p wireless communication capability. In a second embodiment, the flexibility of the SDR paradigm has been traded off to avoid the power consumption associated to the relevant operating system. Application field of reconfigurable antenna is, however, not limited to a better management of the energy consumption. The analysis has also been extended to satellites positioning application. A novel beamforming method has presented demonstrating improvements in the quality of signals received from satellites. Regarding those who deal with positioning algorithms, this advancement help improving precision on the estimated position

Novel fuzzy techniques for modelling human decision making

Standard (type-1) fuzzy sets were introduced to resemble human reasoning in its use of approximate information and uncertainty to generate decisions. Since knowledge can be expressed in a more natural by using fuzzy sets, many decision problems can be greatly simplified. However, standard type-1 fuzzy sets have limitations when it comes to modelling human decision making. In many applications involving the modelling of human decision making (expert systems) the more traditional membership functions do not provide a wide enough choice for the system developer. They are therefore missing an opportunity to produce simpler or better systems. The use of complex non-convex membership functions in the context of human decision making systems were investigated. It was demonstrated that non-convex membership functions are plausible, reasonable membership functions in the sense originally intended by Zadeh. All humans, including ‘experts’, exhibit variation in their decision making. To date, it has been an implicit assumption that expert systems, including fuzzy expert systems, should not exhibit such variation. Type-2 fuzzy sets feature membership functions that are themselves fuzzy sets. While type-2 fuzzy sets capture uncertainty by introducing a range of membership values associated with each value of the base variable, but they do not capture the notion of variability. To overcome this limitation of type-2 fuzzy sets, Garibaldi previously proposed the term ‘non-deterministic fuzzy reasoning’ in which variability is introduced into the membership functions of a fuzzy system through the use of random alterations to the parameters. In this thesis, this notion is extended and formalised through the introduction of a notion termed a non-stationary fuzzy set. The concept of random perturbations that can be used for generating these non-stationary fuzzy sets is proposed. The footprint of variation (FOV) is introduced to describe the area covering the range from the minimum to the maximum fuzzy sets which comprise the non-stationary fuzzy sets (this is similar to the footprint of uncertainty of type-2 sets). Basic operators, i.e. union, intersection and complement, for non-stationary fuzzy sets are also proposed. Proofs of properties of non-stationary fuzzy sets to satisfy the set theoretic laws are also given in this thesis. It can be observed that, firstly, a non-stationary fuzzy set is a collection of type-1 fuzzy sets in which there is an explicit, defined, relationship between the fuzzy sets. Specifically, each of the instantiations (individual type-1 sets) is derived by a perturbation of (making a small change to) a single underlying membership function. Secondly, a non-stationary fuzzy set does not have secondary membership functions, and secondary membership grades. Hence, there is no ‘direct’ equivalent to the embedded type-2 sets of a type-2 fuzzy sets. Lastly, the non-stationary inference process is quite different from type-2 inference, in that non-stationary inference is just a repeated type-1 inference. Several case studies have been carried out in this research. Experiments have been carried out to investigate the use of non-stationary fuzzy sets, and the relationship between non-stationary and interval type-2 fuzzy sets. The results from these experiments are compared with results produced by type-2 fuzzy systems. As an aside, experiments were carried out to investigate the effect of the number of tunable parameters on performance in type-1 and type-2 fuzzy systems. It was demonstrated that more tunable parameters can improve the performance of a non-singleton type-1 fuzzy system to be as good as or better than the equivalent type-2 fuzzy system. Taken as a whole, the techniques presented in this thesis represent a valuable addition to the tools available to a model designer for constructing fuzzy models of human decision making