Newton Nonholonomic Source Seeking for Distance-Dependent Maps

The topics of source seeking and Newton-based extremum seeking have flourished, independently, but never combined. We present the first Newton-based source seeking algorithm. The algorithm employs forward velocity tuning, as in the very first source seeker for the unicycle, and incorporates an additional Riccati filter for inverting the Hessian inverse and feeding it into the demodulation signal. Using second-order Lie bracket averaging, we prove convergence to the source at a rate that is independent of the unknown Hessian of the map. The result is semiglobal and practical, for a map that is quadratic in the distance from the source. The paper presents a theory and simulations, which show advantage of the Newton-based over the gradient-based source seeking

THE EUROPEAN UNION’S IDENTITY AS AN INTERNATIONAL CIVILIAN ACTOR

Treating the EU through the civilian power prism and its civilisatory mission (la mission civilisatrice) is one of the oldest distinctive European concepts relating to its international political power, and consequently, of its nature as a security actor in the international relations. Conceptualization of the EU as a civilian power first makes the author François Duchêne, that interpreting the security and power structure of the European Union, its attributes (such as: weak diplomacy, incoherency, and total deficit of armed forces) and of course its nature as foedus pacificum (League of peace), can be concluded and its existence as a civilian actor, tending to achieve civilian objectives. In that sense, this paper describes and analyzes the nature of the EU identity as a civilian security actor on the international political scene

LOCAL DEMOCRACY TRENDS IN GEORGIA

Georgia is a country that gravitates towards Europe with strong tendencies to join the European Union. Since the early 1990-ties it has been undergoing the process of political reforms towards political pluralism and overall democratization, slowed by the civil war and war waged for its territorial integrity. The last period 2004-2014 is the one that promoted and speeded up the process of democratization especially at local level. These developmental trends were the subject of our analysis as concerning three very important areas: devolution of competencies or transfer of competencies from central to local authorities, fiscal decentralization and relations between central and local authorities. In this respect the research findings proved limited progress in respect to devolution of competencies and fiscal decentralization that provided some own revenues for local authorities and opportunities to freely dispose with some of the state grants as well as introducing criteria and supervisory procedures in exerting state administrative and financial control over local organs, but still the system is burdened by the centralistic tendencies, reaching the general conclusion that the Georgian local government in the last period (2004-2014) has made considerable developmental progress in comparison to the former periods but the system can be still characterized by fundamental restrictions in its functioning

Prescribed-Time Seeking of a Repulsive Source by Unicycle Angular Velocity Tuning

All the existing source seeking algorithms for unicycle models in GPS-denied settings guarantee at best an exponential rate of convergence over an infinite interval. Using the recently introduced time-varying feedback tools for prescribed-time stabilization, we achieve source seeking in prescribed time, i.e., the convergence to the source, without the measurements of the position and velocity of the unicycle, in as short a time as the user desires, starting from an arbitrary distance from the source. The convergence is established using a singularly perturbed version of the Lie bracket averaging method, combined with time dilation and time contraction operations. The algorithm is robust, provably, even to an arbitrarily strong gradient-dependent repulsive velocity drift emanating from the source