Distributed Adaptive Fault-Tolerant Control of Uncertain Multi-Agent Systems

This paper presents an adaptive fault-tolerant control (FTC) scheme for a class of nonlinear uncertain multi-agent systems. A local FTC scheme is designed for each agent using local measurements and suitable information exchanged between neighboring agents. Each local FTC scheme consists of a fault diagnosis module and a reconfigurable controller module comprised of a baseline controller and two adaptive fault-tolerant controllers activated after fault detection and after fault isolation, respectively. Under certain assumptions, the closed-loop system's stability and leader-follower consensus properties are rigorously established under different modes of the FTC system, including the time-period before possible fault detection, between fault detection and possible isolation, and after fault isolation

Automated On-line Diagnosis and Control Configuration in Robotic Systems Using Model Based Analytical Redundancy

Because of the increasingly demanding tasks that robotic systems are asked to perform, there is a need to make them more reliable, intelligent, versatile and self-sufficient. Furthermore, throughout the robotic system?s operation, changes in its internal and external environments arise, which can distort trajectory tracking, slow down its performance, decrease its capabilities, and even bring it to a total halt. Changes in robotic systems are inevitable. They have diverse characteristics, magnitudes and origins, from the all-familiar viscous friction to Coulomb/Sticktion friction, and from structural vibrations to air/underwater environmental change. This thesis presents an on-line environmental Change, Detection, Isolation and Accommodation (CDIA) scheme that provides a robotic system the capabilities to achieve demanding requirements and manage the ever-emerging changes. The CDIA scheme is structured around a priori known dynamic models of the robotic system and the changes (faults). In this approach, the system monitors its internal and external environments, detects any changes, identifies and learns them, and makes necessary corrections into its behavior in order to minimize or counteract their effects. A comprehensive study is presented that deals with every stage, aspect, and variation of the CDIA process. One of the novelties of the proposed approach is that the profile of the change may be either time or state-dependent. The contribution of the CDIA scheme is twofold as it provides robustness with respect to unmodeled dynamics and with respect to torque-dependent, state-dependent, structural and external environment changes. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is verified by the development of the CDIA scheme for a SCARA robot. Results of this extensive numerical study are included to verify the applicability of the proposed scheme

A survey of outlier detection methodologies

Outlier detection has been used for centuries to detect and, where appropriate, remove anomalous observations from data. Outliers arise due to mechanical faults, changes in system behaviour, fraudulent behaviour, human error, instrument error or simply through natural deviations in populations. Their detection can identify system faults and fraud before they escalate with potentially catastrophic consequences. It can identify errors and remove their contaminating effect on the data set and as such to purify the data for processing. The original outlier detection methods were arbitrary but now, principled and systematic techniques are used, drawn from the full gamut of Computer Science and Statistics. In this paper, we introduce a survey of contemporary techniques for outlier detection. We identify their respective motivations and distinguish their advantages and disadvantages in a comparative review

Disturbance observer-based fault-tolerant control for robotic systems with guaranteed prescribed performance

The actuator failure compensation control problem of robotic systems possessing dynamic uncertainties has been investigated in this paper. Control design against partial loss of effectiveness (PLOE) and total loss of effectiveness (TLOE) of the actuator are considered and described, respectively, and a disturbance observer (DO) using neural networks is constructed to attenuate the influence of the unknown disturbance. Regarding the prescribed error bounds as time-varying constraints, the control design method based on barrier Lyapunov function (BLF) is used to strictly guarantee both the steady-state performance and the transient performance. A simulation study on a two-link planar manipulator verifies the effectiveness of the proposed controllers in dealing with the prescribed performance, the system uncertainties, and the unknown actuator failure simultaneously. Implementation on a Baxter robot gives an experimental verification of our controller

A control-theoretical fault prognostics and accommodation framework for a class of nonlinear discrete-time systems

Fault diagnostics and prognostics schemes (FDP) are necessary for complex industrial systems to prevent unscheduled downtime resulting from component failures. Existing schemes in continuous-time are useful for diagnosing complex industrial systems and no work has been done for prognostics. Therefore, in this dissertation, a systematic design methodology for model-based fault prognostics and accommodation is undertaken for a class of nonlinear discrete-time systems. This design methodology, which does not require any failure data, is introduced in six papers. In Paper I, a fault detection and prediction (FDP) scheme is developed for a class of nonlinear system with state faults by assuming that all the states are measurable. A novel estimator is utilized for detecting a fault. Upon detection, an online approximator in discrete-time (OLAD) and a robust adaptive term are activated online in the estimator wherein the OLAD learns the unknown fault dynamics while the robust adaptive term ensures asymptotic performance guarantee. A novel update law is proposed for tuning the OLAD parameters. Additionally, by using the parameter update law, time to reach an a priori selected failure threshold is derived for prognostics. Subsequently, the FDP scheme is used to estimate the states and detect faults in nonlinear input-output systems in Paper II and to nonlinear discrete-time systems with both state and sensor faults in Paper III. Upon detection, a novel fault isolation estimator is used to identify the faults in Paper IV. It was shown that certain faults can be accommodated via controller reconfiguration in Paper V. Finally, the performance of the FDP framework is demonstrated via Lyapunov stability analysis and experimentally on the Caterpillar hydraulics test-bed in Paper VI by using an artificial immune system as an OLAD --Abstract, page iv

Soft Computing Techniques and Their Applications in Intel-ligent Industrial Control Systems: A Survey

Soft computing involves a series of methods that are compatible with imprecise information and complex human cognition. In the face of industrial control problems, soft computing techniques show strong intelligence, robustness and cost-effectiveness. This study dedicates to providing a survey on soft computing techniques and their applications in industrial control systems. The methodologies of soft computing are mainly classified in terms of fuzzy logic, neural computing, and genetic algorithms. The challenges surrounding modern industrial control systems are summarized based on the difficulties in information acquisition, the difficulties in modeling control rules, the difficulties in control system optimization, and the requirements for robustness. Then, this study reviews soft-computing-related achievements that have been developed to tackle these challenges. Afterwards, we present a retrospect of practical industrial control applications in the fields including transportation, intelligent machines, process industry as well as energy engineering. Finally, future research directions are discussed from different perspectives. This study demonstrates that soft computing methods can endow industry control processes with many merits, thus having great application potential. It is hoped that this survey can serve as a reference and provide convenience for scholars and practitioners in the fields of industrial control and computer science

Disturbance observer-based neural network control of cooperative multiple manipulators with input saturation

In this paper, the complex problems of internal forces and position control are studied simultaneously and a disturbance observer-based radial basis function neural network (RBFNN) control scheme is proposed to: 1) estimate the unknown parameters accurately; 2) approximate the disturbance experienced by the system due to input saturation; and 3) simultaneously improve the robustness of the system. More specifically, the proposed scheme utilizes disturbance observers, neural network (NN) collaborative control with an adaptive law, and full state feedback. Utilizing Lyapunov stability principles, it is shown that semiglobally uniformly bounded stability is guaranteed for all controlled signals of the closed-loop system. The effectiveness of the proposed controller as predicted by the theoretical analysis is verified by comparative experimental studies

On-line estimation approaches to fault-tolerant control of uncertain systems

This thesis is concerned with fault estimation in Fault-Tolerant Control (FTC) and as such involves the joint problem of on-line estimation within an adaptive control system. The faults that are considered are significant uncertainties affecting the control variables of the process and their estimates are used in an adaptive control compensation mechanism. The approach taken involves the active FTC, as the faults can be considered as uncertainties affecting the control system. The engineering (application domain) challenges that are addressed are: (1) On-line model-based fault estimation and compensation as an FTC problem, for systems with large but bounded fault magnitudes and for which the faults can be considered as a special form of dynamic uncertainty. (2) Fault-tolerance in the distributed control of uncertain inter-connected systems The thesis also describes how challenge (1) can be used in the distributed control problem of challenge (2). The basic principle adopted throughout the work is that the controller has two components, one involving the nominal control action and the second acting as an adaptive compensation for significant uncertainties and fault effects. The fault effects are a form of uncertainty which is considered too large for the application of passive FTC methods. The thesis considers several approaches to robust control and estimation: augmented state observer (ASO); sliding mode control (SMC); sliding mode fault estimation via Sliding Mode Observer (SMO); linear parameter-varying (LPV) control; two-level distributed control with learning coordination

Validating a neural network-based online adaptive system

Neural networks are popular models used for online adaptation to accommodate system faults and recuperate against environmental changes in real-time automation and control applications. However, the adaptivity limits the applicability of conventional verification and validation (V&V) techniques to such systems. We investigated the V&V of neural network-based online adaptive systems and developed a novel validation approach consisting of two important methods. (1) An independent novelty detector at the system input layer detects failure conditions and tracks abnormal events/data that may cause unstable learning behavior. (2) At the system output layer, we perform a validity check on the network predictions to validate its accommodation performance.;Our research focuses on the Intelligent Flight Control System (IFCS) for NASA F-15 aircraft as an example of online adaptive control application. We utilized Support Vector Data Description (SVDD), a one-class classifier to examine the data entering the adaptive component and detect potential failures. We developed a decompose and combine strategy to drastically reduce its computational cost, from O(n 3) down to O( n32 log n) such that the novelty detector becomes feasible in real-time.;We define a confidence measure, the validity index, to validate the predictions of the Dynamic Cell Structure (DCS) network in IFCS. The statistical information is collected during adaptation. The validity index is computed to reflect the trustworthiness associated with each neural network output. The computation of validity index in DCS is straightforward and efficient.;Through experimentation with IFCS, we demonstrate that: (1) the SVDD tool detects system failures accurately and provides validation inferences in a real-time manner; (2) the validity index effectively indicates poor fitting within regions characterized by sparse data and/or inadequate learning. The developed methods can be integrated with available online monitoring tools and further generalized to complete a promising validation framework for neural network based online adaptive systems