An innovative metaheuristic strategy for solar energy management through a neural networks framework

Proper management of solar energy as an effective renewable source is of high importance toward sustainable energy harvesting. This paper offers a novel sophisticated method for predicting solar irradiance (SIr) from environmental conditions. To this end, an efficient metaheuristic technique, namely electromagnetic field optimization (EFO), is employed for optimizing a neural network. This algorithm quickly mines a publicly available dataset for nonlinearly tuning the network parameters. To suggest an optimal configuration, five influential parameters of the EFO are optimized by an extensive trial and error practice. Analyzing the results showed that the proposed model can learn the SIr pattern and predict it for unseen conditions with high accuracy. Furthermore, it provided about 10% and 16% higher accuracy compared to two benchmark optimizers, namely shuffled complex evolution and shuffled frog leaping algorithm. Hence, the EFO-supervised neural network can be a promising tool for the early prediction of SIr in practice. The findings of this research may shed light on the use of advanced intelligent models for efficient energy development

Output Feedback Adaptive Dynamic Surface Sliding-Mode Control for Quadrotor UAVs with Tracking Error Constraints

In this paper, a fuzzy adaptive output feedback dynamic surface sliding-mode control scheme is presented for a class of quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The framework of the controller design process is divided into two stages: the attitude control process and the position control process. The main features of this work are (1) a nonlinear observer is employed to predict the motion velocities of the quadrotor UAV; therefore, only the position signals are needed for the position tracking controller design; (2) by using the minimum learning technology, there is only one parameter which needs to be updated online at each design step and the computational burden can be greatly reduced; (3) a performance function is introduced to transform the tracking error into a new variable which can make the tracking error of the system satisfy the prescribed performance indicators; (4) the sliding-mode surface is introduced in the process of the controller design, and the robustness of the system is improved. Stability analysis proved that all signals of the closed-loop system are uniformly ultimately bounded. The results of the hardware-in-the-loop simulation validate the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme