Learning‐based collision avoidance and robust H∞ optimal formation control for uncertain quadrotor UAV systems

1 A Survey on Computational Optimal Control.- Issues in the Direct Transcription of Optimal Control Problems to Sparse Nonlinear Programs.- Optimization in Control of Robots.- Large-scale SQP Methods and their Application in Trajectory Optimization.- Solving Optimal Control and Pursuit-Evasion Game Problems of High Complexity.- 2 Theoretical Aspects of Optimal Control and Nonlinear Programming.- Continuation Methods In Boundary Value Problems.- Second Order Optimality Conditions for Singular Extremals.- Synthesis of Adaptive Optimal Controls for Linear Dynamic Systems.- Control Applications of Reduced SQP Methods.- Time Optimal Control of Mechanical Systems.- 3 Algorithms for Optimal Control Calculations.- Second Order Algorithm for Time Optimal Control of a Linear System.- An SQP-type Solution Method for Constrained Discrete-Time Optimal Control Problems.- Numerical Methods for Solving Differential Games, Prospective Applications to Technical Problems.- Construction of the Optimal Feedback Controller for Constrained Optimal Control Problems with Unknown Disturbances.- Repetitive Optimization for Predictive Control of Dynamic Systems under Uncertainty.- Optimal Control of Multistage Systems Described by High-Index Differential-Algebraic Equations.- A New Class of a High Order Interior Point Method for the Solution of Convex Semiinfinite Optimization Problems.- A Structured Interior Point SQP Method for Nonlinear Optimal Control Problems.- 4 Software for Optimal Control Calculations.- Automated Approach for Optimizing Dynamic Systems.- ANDECS: A Computation Environment for Control Applications of Optimization.- Application of Automatic Differentiation to Optimal Control Problems.- OCCAL: A mixed symbolic-numeric Optimal Control CALculator.- 5 Applications of Optimal Control.- A Robotic Satellite with Simplified Design.- Nonlinear Control under Constraints of a Biological System.- An Object-Oriented Approach to Optimally Describe and Specify a SCADA System Applied to a Power Network.- Near-Optimal Flight Trajectories Generated by Neural Networks.- Performance of a Feedback Method with Respect to Changes in the Air-Density during the Ascent of a Two-Stage-To-Orbit Vehicle.- Linear Optimal Control for Reentry Flight.- Steady-State Modelling of Turbine Engine with Controllers.- Shortest Paths for Satellite Mounted Robot Manipulators.- Optimal Control of the Industrial Robot Manutec r3.

In this paper, the nonlinear optimal control problem is investigated for spacecraft formation flying with collision avoidance. Based on a nonlinear model of formation flying, two optimal tracking control laws are proposed to ensure the formation pattern converges to the predetermined configuration. The first optimal control law which combines Lyapunov optimizing control with a trajectory-following optimization technique is developed to solve the finite-time nonlinear optimal control problem. For the second controller, an extended [Formula: see text]-[Formula: see text] method is applied to design a closed-form feedback control scheme for nonlinear control problem of spacecraft formation flying with non-standard cost functions. By taking into account the flying safety, a repulsive control scheme is incorporated in the optimal controller to ensure collision avoidance and minimize the performance index. Finally, a numerical example is performed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approaches.

In this paper, we study the optimal control problem for Takagi–Sugeno (T-S) fuzzy systems with disturbances. Due to the presence of disturbances in the T-S fuzzy systems, a fuzzy optimal state feedback control approach is presented by employing a two-player zero-sum game. Since the analytical optimal control solutions and the worst-case disturbance policies of T-S fuzzy systems can be boiled down to solving the algebraic Riccati equations (AREs), which are difficult to be obtained directly, a model-free policy iteration (PI) learning algorithm is proposed to obtain their approximation solutions. It is proved that the developed fuzzy optimal state feedback controller can ensure the fuzzy systems to be asymptotically stable and satisfy the disturbance attenuation condition simultaneously. Also, the designed PI learning algorithm can converge to their optimal solutions. Finally, we apply the developed fuzzy optimal state feedback control method to the truck-trailer system and the simulation results demonstrated the effectiveness of the developed scheme.

In this paper, we present an optimal control approach using Linear Matrix Inequalities (LMIs) for trajectory tracking control of a three-wheeled omnidirectional mobile robot in the presence of external disturbances on the robot's actuators and noise in the robot's sensor measurements. First, a state-space representation of the omnidirectional robot dynamics is derived using a point-mass dynamic model. Then, we propose an LMI-based full-state feedback H <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">∞</sub> -optimal controller for the tracking problem. The robot's tracking performance with the H <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">∞</sub> -optimal controller is compared to its performance with a classical full-state feedback tracking controller in simulations with circular and bowtie-shaped reference trajectories. In order to evaluate our proposed controller in practice, we also implement the H <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">∞</sub> -optimal and classical controllers for these reference trajectories on a three-wheeled omnidirectional robot. The H <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">∞</sub> -optimal controller guarantees stabilization of the robot motion and attenuates the effects of frictional disturbances and measurement noise on the robot's tracking performance. Using the H <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">∞</sub> -optimal controller, the robot is able to track the reference trajectories with up to a 47.8% and 45.8% decrease in the maximum pose and twist errors, respectively, over a full cycle of the trajectory compared to the classical controller. The simulation and experimental results show that our LMI-based H <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">∞</sub> -optimal controller is robust to undesired effects of disturbances and noise on the dynamic behavior of the robot during trajectory tracking and can outperform the classical controller in attenuating their effects.

Optimal control of interconnected systems with time-correlated noises: Application to vehicle platoon

Optimal yaw moment control law for improved vehicle handling

This paper studies the decentralized optimal control of discrete-time system with inputdelay, where a large number of agents with the identical decoupling dynamical equations and the coupling cost function through the mean field are considered. The decentralized and centralized optimal controllers are proposed by the optimal tracking control of LQR problem with delay. They are proved that the optimal controllers and the optimal cost function of the centralized and decentralized solutions are equivalent for the optimal control problem. An illustrative example is given to show the efficiency of the decentralized optimal controllers.

In this study, a finite‐time online optimal controller was designed for a nonlinear wheeled mobile robotic system (WMRS) with inequality constraints, based on reinforcement learning (RL) neural networks. In addition, an extended cost function, obtained by introducing a penalty function to the original long‐time cost function, was proposed to deal with the optimal control problem of the system with inequality constraints. A novel Hamilton‐Jacobi‐Bellman (HJB) equation containing the constraint conditions was defined to determine the optimal control input. Furthermore, two neural networks (NNs), a critic and an actor NN, were established to approximate the extended cost function and the optimal control input, respectively. The adaptation laws of the critic and actor NN were obtained with the gradient descent method. The semi‐global practical finite‐time stability (SGPFS) was proved using Lyapunov's stability theory. The tracking error converges to a small region near zero within the constraints in a finite period. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed optimal controller was verified by a simulation based on a practical wheeled mobile robot model.

In this study, the problem of finding an optimal controller for nonlinear systems with one input and a reference tracking signal is approached. With the problem's formulation, any desired signal can be tracked instantly with a closed-loop controller without the need for integral terms. Presentation lies at the heart of optimal control. This study, however, does not consider the integral term, allowing tracking and stability to occur naturally. It has a broad scope with a wide range of applications, namely when dealing with affine nonlinear systems, which provide geometric control unification with asymptotic stability in some cases. A common scenario that comes from optimal control involves the minimization of integral cost functionals. Issues like asymptotic stability or even tracking to the desired reference signal have always been the main limitations. In this study, the main theorem allows the solution of optimal control problems with no-integral terms, in other words tracking problems with input/state constraints, providing closed-loop controllers. A DC motor with a pendulum in upright position is an example of an application for which singular optimal control is tested in this study. The results confirm both asymptotic stability and optimal tracking with an accuracy of 95%. The main contributions of this study include an optimal closed-loop controller with no mixed initial/final conditions, input/state constraints, asymptotic stability guarantee, a strong connection with geometric tools and finally the possibility to generalize to systems with multiple inputs. As a conclusion, general nonlinear control systems can be included in the optimal control methodology presented in this study including input/state constraints. Due to the lack of integral terms, the problem can be solved in closed form by using an optimal closed-loop controller.

The centralized paradigm of a single controller and a single plant upon which modern control theory is built is no longer applicable to modern cyber-physical systems of interest, such as the power-grid, software defined networks or automated highways systems, as these are all large-scale and spatially distributed. Both the scale and the distributed nature of these systems has motivated the decentralization of control schemes into local sub-controllers that measure, exchange and act on locally available subsets of the globally available system information. This decentralization of control logic leads to different decision makers acting on asymmetric information sets, introduces the need for coordination between them, and perhaps not surprisingly makes the resulting optimal control problem much harder to solve. In fact, shortly after such questions were posed, it was realized that seemingly simple decentralized optimal control problems are computationally intractable to solve, with the Wistenhausen counterexample being a famous instance of this phenomenon. Spurred on by this perhaps discouraging result, a concerted 40 year effort to identify tractable classes of distributed optimal control problems culminated in the notion of quadratic invariance, which loosely states that if sub-controllers can exchange information with each other at least as quickly as the effect of their control actions propagates through the plant, then the resulting distributed optimal control problem admits a convex formulation. The identification of quadratic invariance as an appropriate means of convexifying distributed optimal control problems led to a renewed enthusiasm in the controller synthesis community, resulting in a rich set of results over the past decade. The contributions of this thesis can be seen as being a part of this broader family of results, with a particular focus on closing the gap between theory and practice by relaxing or removing assumptions made in the traditional distributed optimal control framework. Our contributions are to the foundational theory of distributed optimal control, and fall under three broad categories, namely controller synthesis, architecture design and system identification. We begin by providing two novel controller synthesis algorithms. The first is a solution to the distributed H∞ optimal control problem subject to delay constraints, and provides the only known exact characterization of delay-constrained distributed controllers satisfying an H∞ norm bound. The second is an explicit dynamic programming solution to a two player LQR state-feedback problem with varying delays. Accommodating varying delays represents an important first step in combining distributed optimal control theory with the area of Networked Control Systems that considers lossy channels in the feedback loop. Our next set of results are concerned with controller architecture design. When designing controllers for large-scale systems, the architectural aspects of the controller such as the placement of actuators, sensors, and the communication links between them can no longer be taken as given -- indeed the task of designing this architecture is now as important as the design of the control laws themselves. To address this task, we formulate the Regularization for Design (RFD) framework, which is a unifying computationally tractable approach, based on the model matching framework and atomic norm regularization, for the simultaneous co-design of a structured optimal controller and the architecture needed to implement it. Our final result is a contribution to distributed system identification. Traditional system identification techniques such as subspace identification are not computationally scalable, and destroy rather than leverage any a priori information about the system's interconnection structure. We argue that in the context of system identification, an essential building block of any scalable algorithm is the ability to estimate local dynamics within a large interconnected system. To that end we propose a promising heuristic for identifying the dynamics of a subsystem that is still connected to a large system. We exploit the fact that the transfer function of the local dynamics is low-order, but full-rank, while the transfer function of the global dynamics is high-order, but low-rank, to formulate this separation task as a nuclear norm minimization problem. Finally, we conclude with a brief discussion of future research directions, with a particular emphasis on how to incorporate the results of this thesis, and those of optimal control theory in general, into a broader theory of dynamics, control and optimization in layered architectures.

This paper is concerned with the optimal output synchronization control problem for a class of heterogeneous complex dynamical networks (CDNs) with partially unknown system dynamics. By defining a new quadratic performance index including the information of state couplings, an optimal controller consisting of a feedback control and a compensated feedforward control is then designed. A necessary and sufficient condition for the optimal control minimizing the quadratic performance index is established. Especially, an algebraic Riccati equation (ARE) associated with a discount factor is obtained, and a novel online iteration algorithm by iteratively solving the ARE is proposed to compute the optimal controller gain for the case that the CDNs are with partially unknown system dynamics. Moreover, it is proved that the output synchronization errors converge to zero asymptotically by applying the optimal control laws. Finally, two simulation examples are provided to verify the effectiveness of the proposed control method.

To find effective control of the duplex process of induction melting in conditions of uncertainties, a method was suggested that made it possible to obtain optimal controls for both stages: melting and thermal treatment. It is shown how the search for an optimal melting control strategy can be performed using the theory of statistical games. At the same time, it is selected which of the melting regimes will be the best with the existing provision of the shop with charge materials. The costs of melting are the total costs, consisting of: – costs for the selected technological mode of melting (including costs for materials), – costs from the potential rejection of castings due to the non-conformity of the chemical composition of the alloy to the specified – due to the incorrectly chosen melting mode, – costs from the downtime due to the fact that the necessary amount of metal from the furnace is not delivered to the conveyor. The choice of an optimal control strategy in accordance with the proposed procedure can remove uncertainty in the evaluation of input process variables if they are taken as indicators of the charge quality. To find the optimal control at the stage of the heat treatment, a multialternative description of the final state is proposed on the basis of solving the problem of ridge analysis. This makes it possible to remove the uncertainty in the estimation of the final state, which allows a lot of optimal solutions in the sense of achieving a given quality. It is shown that such approach makes it possible not only to synthesize the optimal controller of the temperature regime on the basis of an analysis of the system of differential equations describing the control object, but also the application of the Pontryagin maximum principle to search for optimal control of the thermal treatment. The proposed method allows to determine the optimal control in the sense of stabilization for a given process parameter of the duplex process of induction melting. The resulting solutions form the necessary logical conditions for the logic control unit for the control system of the duplex induction melting process.

This work addresses the optimal control problem of dynamical systems with inaccessible outputs. A case in which dynamical system outputs cannot be measured or inaccessible. This contradicts with the nature of the optimal controllers which can be considered without any loss of generality as state feedback control laws for systems with linear dynamics. Therefore, this work attempts to estimate dynamical system states through a novel state observer that does not require injecting the dynamical system outputs onto the observer structure during its design. A linear quadratic optimal control law is then realized based on the estimated states which allows controlling motion along with active vibration suppression of this class of dynamical systems with inaccessible outputs. Validity of the proposed control framework is evaluated experimentally.

In this paper, a novel NN-based optimal adaptive consensus-based formation control scheme over finite horizon is presented for networked mobile robots or agents in the presence of uncertain robot/agent dynamics. The uncertain robot formation dynamics are approximated online by using an NN-based identifier and a suitable weight tuning law. In addition, a novel time-varying value function is derived by using the augmented error vector, which consists of the regulation and consensus-based formation errors of each robot. By using the value function approximation and the identified dynamics, the near optimal control input over finite horizon is derived. This finite horizon optimal control leads to a time-varying value function, which becomes the solution of the Hamilton–Jacobi–Bellman equation, and control input is approximated by a second NN with time-varying activation function. A novel weight update law for the NN value function is developed to tune the value function, satisfy the terminal constraint, and relax an initial admissible controller requirement. The Lyapunov stability method is utilized to demonstrate the consensus of the overall formation. Finally, simulation results are given to verify theoretical claims. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

SummaryIn this article, an optimized formation control algorithm is presented for unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) with collision avoidance and prescribed performance. The prescribed formation geometry is designed in the leader‐follower formation architecture, in which each vehicle tracks its intermediary leader with preserving a desired separation. A prescribed performance control design technique is introduced to guarantee the transient and steady‐state performance specifications on formation errors. Radial basis function neural networks (NNs) are employed to approximate modeling uncertainties including damping terms and unmodeled dynamics. Based on an actor‐critic learning strategy, a reinforcement learning (RL) algorithm is proposed to ensure the optimality of formation control and the specified tracking accuracy simultaneously, in which actor NNs take appropriate control behaviors by interacting with the external environment, and critic NNs evaluate the control performance and generate a reinforcement signal to actor NNs for facilitating the improvement of subsequent behaviors. Stability analysis shows that the proposed optimal formation controller achieves semi‐global uniform ultimate boundedness of closed‐loop adaptive systems with prescribed performance. Comparative simulation results illustrate the effectiveness and superiority of the presented control algorithm.