Adaptive coordinated attitude control for spacecraft formation with saturating actuators and unknown inertia

In this paper, an adaptive attitude coordination control problem for spacecraft formation flying is investigated under a general directed communication topology containing a directed spanning tree with a leader as the root. In the presence of unknown time-varying inertia, persistent external disturbances and control input saturation, a novel robust adaptive coordinated attitude control algorithm with no prior knowledge of inertia for spacecraft is proposed to coordinately track the common time-varying reference states. Aiming at optimizing the control algorithm, a dynamic adjustment function is introduced to adjust the control gain according to the tracking errors. The effectiveness of the proposed control scheme is illustrated through numerical simulation results.     

Distributed adaptive event-triggered protocol for tracking control of leader-following multi-agent systems

A novel adaptive event-triggered control protocol is developed to investigate the tracking control problem of multi-agent systems with general linear dynamics. By introducing the event-triggered control strategy, each agent can decide when to transfer its state to its neighbors at its own triggering instants, which can greatly reduce communication burden of agents. It is shown that the “Zeno phenomenon” does not occur by verifying that there exists a positive lower bound on the inter-event time intervals of agents under the proposed adaptive event-triggered control algorithm. Finally, an example is provided to testify the effectiveness of the obtained theoretical results.     

Finite-time and fixed-time bipartite consensus of multi-agent systems under a unified discontinuous control protocol

This paper investigates the issue of finite/fixed-time bipartite consensus (FFTBC) of multi-agent systems with signed graphs. A new unified framework of finite-time and fixed-time bipartite consensus is built via some discontinuous control protocols based on the theory of differential inclusion and set-valued Lie derivative. Under the structurally balanced or unbalanced signed graphs, the goal of FFTBC is reached by a common discontinuous controller with different control gains, which fills the gap in studying FFTBC issues with discontinuous protocols. Some numerical examples with comparisons are given to demonstrate the effectiveness of our designs.     

Containment control of heterogeneous fractional-order multi-agent systems

Fractional-order calculus has been studied deeply because many networked systems can only be described with fractional-order dynamics in complex environments. When different agents of networked systems show diverse individual features, fractional-order dynamics with heterogeneous characters will be used to illustrate the multi-agent systems (MAS). Based on the distinguishing behaviors of agents, a compounded fractional-order multi-agent systems(FOMAS) is presented with diverse dynamical equations. Suppose multiple leader agents existing in FOMAS, containment consensus control of FOMAS with directed weighted topologies is studied. By applying frequency domain analysis theory of the fractional-order operator, an upper bound of delays is obtained to ensure containment controls of heterogenous FOMAS with communication delays. The consensus results of delayed fractional-order dynamics in this paper can be expanded to the integer-order models. Finally, the results are verified by simulation examples.     

Consensus-based total-amount cooperative tracking control for multi-motor locomotive traction system

In locomotive traction system, unavoidable factors (such as idling and skidding) typically lead to the decline of traction performance of one or more motors, thereby resulting in the fluctuation of total torque traction amount. In this paper, the consensus-based total-amount cooperative tracking control (TACTC) is proposed to maintain the consensus of total torque traction amount with the given reference instruction. First, a disturbance observer is employed to estimate uncertain disturbances, then the output torque and observed values are fed back to design the total amount cooperative tracking control protocol, which is used to coordinate traction torque output redundancy of each individual motor. Simulation results show that the proposed approach is effective in reducing tracking time and tracking errors.     

Decentralized state estimation for the control of network systems

The paper proposes a decentralized state estimation method for the control of network systems, where a cooperative objective has to be achieved. The nodes of the network are partitioned into independent nodes, providing the control inputs, and dependent nodes, controlled by local interaction laws. The proposed state estimation algorithm allows the independent nodes to estimate the state of the dependent nodes in a completely decentralized way. To do that, it is necessary for each independent node of the network to estimate the control input components computed by the other independent nodes, without requiring communication among the independent nodes. The decentralized state estimator, including an input estimator, is developed and the convergence properties are studied. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed approach.     

Viable immersion and invariance control for a class of nonlinear systems and its application to aero-engines

This paper presents a novel approach to stabilize a class of nonlinear systems with state constraints. The motivation behind this study is the need to develop a stabilizing state feedback controller that does not require the knowledge of Lyapunov function and can regulate the states to the equilibrium while meeting the constraints. By using an integration of two relatively new tools: immersion and invariance (I&I) theory and viability theory, a sufficient condition for stability and stabilizability of a general nonlinear affine system with state constraints is derived; Then, the related results are exploited to stabilize a class of nonlinear system in feedback form and with state constraints represented by inequalities and the viable I&I stabilizing state feedback controller is obtained constructively. Further, an application to a nonlinear aero-engine model with the temperature constraint is given to illustrate the applicability and the effectiveness of the proposed method. Finally, a comparative simulation is presented, highlighting the advantages of the viable I&I controller.     

Robust adaptive control for prescribed performance tracking of constrained uncertain nonlinear systems

This paper proposes a robust adaptive control strategy for a class of state-constrained uncertain nonlinear systems with prescribed transient and steady-state behavior. The prescribed tracking performance can be characterized by constraints on an output tracking error. Both state and output constraints are achieved by bounding integral barrier Lyapunov functions in the backstepping procedure. A robust adaptive term is designed to compress auxiliary system uncertainties without the knowledge of their bounds. The satisfaction of control constraints and tracking error convergence are verified by theoretical analysis and are illustrated by simulation results.     

Boundary stabilization of a class of reaction–advection–diffusion systems via a gradient-based optimization approach

In this paper, the boundary stabilization problem of a class of unstable reaction–advection–diffusion (RAD) systems described by a scalar parabolic partial differential equation (PDE) is considered. Different the previous research, we present a new gradient-based optimization framework for designing the optimal feedback kernel for stabilizing the unstable PDE system. Our new method does not require solving non-standard Riccati-type or Klein–Gorden-type PDEs. Instead, the feedback kernel is parameterized as a second-order polynomial whose coefficients are decision variables to be tuned via gradient-based dynamic optimization, where the gradients of the system cost functional (which penalizes both kernel and output magnitude) with respect to the decision parameters are computed by solving a so-called “costate” PDE in standard form. Special constraints are imposed on the kernel coefficients to ensure that the optimized kernel yields closed-loop stability. Finally, three numerical examples are illustrated to verify the effectiveness of the proposed approach.     

Extended dissipative analysis for aircraft flight control systems with random nonlinear actuator fault via non-fragile sampled-data control

This paper addresses the issue of reliable feedback control of an uncertain aircraft flight control systems with disturbances via non-fragile sampled-data control approach. In particular, the parameter uncertainties are assumed to be randomly occurring which is described by the Bernoulli distributed sequences. By constructing a suitable Lyapunov–Krasovskii functional together with Wirtinger-based inequality, a new set of sufficient conditions in terms of linear matrix inequalities is obtained to ensure the asymptotic stability and extended dissipativity of the aircraft flight control systems not only when all actuators are operational, but also in case of some actuator failures. Finally, simulation results are conducted to validate the effectiveness of the proposed control design technique.