A practical nonlinear robust control approach of electro-hydraulic load simulator

This paper studies a nonlinear robust control algorithm of the electro-hydraulic load simulator （EHLS）. The tracking performance of the EHLS is mainly limited by the actuator＇s motion disturbance, flow nonlinearity, and friction, etc. The developed controller is developed based on the nonlinear motion loading model. The problems of the actuator＇s disturbance and flow nonlinearity are considered. To address the friction problem, the friction model of the loading motor is identified experimentally. The friction disturbance is compensated using the obtained friction model. Therefore, this paper considers the main three factors comprehensively. The developed algorithm is easy to apply since the controller can be obtained just with one step back-stepping design. The stability of the developed algorithm is proven via Lyapunov analysis. Both co-simulation and experiments are performed to verify the effectiveness of this method.     

Adaptive Fuzzy Torque Control of Passive Torque Servo Systems Based on Small Gain Theorem and Input-to-state Stability

Passive torque servo system (PTSS) simulates aerodynamic load and exerts the load on actuation system, but PTSS endures position coupling disturbance from active motion of actuation system, and this inherent disturbance is called extra torque. The most important issue for PTSS controller design is how to eliminate the influence of extra torque. Using backstepping technique, adaptive fuzzy torque control (AFTC) algorithm is proposed for PTSS in this paper, which reflects the essential characteristics of PTSS and guarantees transient tracking performance as well as final tracking accuracy. Takagi-Sugeno (T-S) fuzzy logic system is utilized to compensate parametric uncertainties and unstructured uncertainties. The output velocity of actuator identified model is introduced into AFTC aiming to eliminate extra torque. The closed-loop stability is studied using small gain theorem and the control system is proved to be semiglobally uniformly ultimately bounded. The proposed AFTC algorithm is applied to an electric load simulator (ELS), and the comparative experimental results indicate that AFTC controller is effective for PTSS.     

Modeling and Control for Magnetostrictive Hysteresis

To deal with the rate-dependent hysteresis presented in a magnetostrictive actuator, a new method of modeling and control is pro-posed. The relationship between inputs and outputs of the actuator is approximately described by a dynamic differential equation with two rate-dependent coefficients, each expressed as a polynomial of frequency. For a given frequency, the coefficients will be able to be estimated by approximating the experimental data of the outputs of the magnetostrictive actuator. Based on this model, a quasi-PID con-troller is designed. In the space of the coefficients and frequency, the stable domain of closed loop system with hysteresis is analyzed. The numerical simulation and experiments have born witness to the feasibility of the proposed new method.     

A New Hybrid Control Scheme for an Integrated Helicopter and Engine System

A new hybrid control scheme is presented with a robust multiple model fusion control(RMMFC) law for a UH-60 helicopter and an active disturbance rejection control(ADRC) controller for its engines.This scheme is a control design method with every subsystem designed separately but fully considering the couplings between them.With three subspaces with respect to forward flight velocity,a RMMFC is proposed to devise a four-loop reference signal tracing control for the helicopter,which escapes the closed-loop system from unstable state due to the extreme complexity of this integrated nonlinear system.The engines are controlled by the proposed ADRC decoupling controller,which fully takes advantage of a good compensation ability for unmodeled dynamics and extra disturbances,so as to compensate torque disturbance in power turbine speed loop.By simulating a forward acceleration flight task,the RMMFC for the helicopter is validated.It is apparent that the integrated helicopter and engine system(IHES) has much better dynamic performance under the new control scheme.Especially in the switching process,the large transient is significantly weakened,and smooth transition among candidate controllers is achieved.Over the entire simulation task,the droop of power turbine speed with the proposed ADRC controller is significantly slighter than with the conventional PID controller,and the response time of the former is much faster than the latter.By simulating a rapid climb and descent flight task,the results also show the feasibility for the application of the proposed multiple model fusion control.Although there is aggressive power demand in this maneuver,the droop of power turbine speed with an ADRC controller is smaller than using a PID controller.The control performance for helicopter and engine is enhanced by adopting this hybrid control scheme,and simulation results in other envelope state give proofs of robustness for this new scheme.     

Accuracy enhancement of the spherical actuator with a two-level geometric calibration method

This paper presents a two-level geometric calibration method for the permanent magnet （PM） spherical actuator to improve its motion control accuracy. The proposed actuator is com- posed of a stator with circumferential coils and a rotor with multiple PM poles. Due to the assembly and fabrication errors, the real geometric parameters of the actuator will deviate from their design values. Hence, the identification of such errors is critical for the motion control tasks. A two-level geometric calibration approach is proposed to identify such errors. In the first level, the calibration model is formulated based on the differential form of the kinematic equation, which is to identify the geometric errors in the spherical joint. In the second level, the calibration model is formulated based on the differential form of torque formula, which is to calibrate the geometric parameters of the magnetization axes of PM poles and coils axes. To demonstrate the robustness and availability of the calibration algorithm, simulations are conducted. The results have shown that the proposed two-level calibration method can effectively compensate the geometric parameter errors and improve the positioning accuracy of the spherical actuator.     

Adaptive dynamic surface control of NSVs with input saturation using a disturbance observer

An adaptive dynamic surface control(DSC)scheme is proposed for the multi-input and multi-output(MIMO)attitude motion of near-space vehicles(NSVs)in the presence of external disturbance,system uncertainty and input saturation.The external disturbance and the system uncertainty are efficiently tackled using a Nussbaum disturbance observer(NDO),and the adaptive controller is constructed by combining the dynamic surface control technique to handle the problem of‘‘explosion of complexity’’inherent in the conventional backstepping method.For handling the input saturation,an auxiliary system is designed with the same order as that of the studied MIMO attitude system.Using the error between the saturation input and the desired control input as the input of the designed auxiliary system,a series of signals are generated to compensate for the effect of the saturation in the dynamic surface control design.It is proved that the developed control scheme can guarantee that all signals of the closed-loop control system are semi-globally uniformly bounded.Finally,simulation results illustrate that the proposed control scheme can achieve satisfactory tracking performance under the composite effects of the input saturation and the external disturbance.     

Research of Compound Controller for Flight Simulator with Disturbance Observer

A compound controller is proposed to alleviate the considerable chattering in output of zero phase error tracking controller (ZPETC), when the flight simulator losses command data of simulation signal. Besides, the shortcomings, caused by conventional differential methods in retrieving velocity and acceleration signals, are avoided to a certain extent. The compound controller based on disturbance observer (DOB) is composed of a feed-forward controller and a feedback controller. It estimates velocity and acceleration of unknown tracking signal, and also velocity response with an approximate method for differential. The experiments on a single-axis flight simulator show that the proposed method has strong robustness against parameter perturbations and external disturbances, owing to the introduced DOB. Compared with the scheme with ZPETC, the proposed scheme possesses more simple design and better tracking performance. Moreover, it is less sensitive to position command distortion of flight simulator.     

Motion synchronization in a dual redundant HA/EHA system by using a hybrid integrated intelligent control design

This paper presents an integrated fuzzy controller design approach to synchronize a dis-similar redundant actuation system of a hydraulic actuator (HA) and an electro-hydrostatic actu-ator (EHA) with system uncertainties and disturbances. The motion synchronous control system consists of a trajectory generator, an individual position controller for each actuator, and a fuzzy force tracking controller (FFTC) for both actuators. The trajectory generator provides the desired motion dynamics and designing parameters of the trajectory which are taken according to the dynamic characteristics of the EHA. The position controller consists of a feed-forward controller and a fuzzy position tracking controller (FPTC) and acts as a decoupled controller, improving posi-tion tracking performance with the help of the feed-forward controller and the FPTC. The FFTC acts as a coupled controller and takes into account the inherent coupling effect. The simulation results show that the proposed controller not only eliminates initial force fighting by synchronizing the two actuators, but also improves disturbance rejection performance.     

Neural network-based fault diagnosis for spacecraft with single-gimbal control moment gyros

This paper proposes a neural network-based fault diagnosis scheme to address the problem of fault isolation and estimation for the Single-Gimbal Control Moment Gyroscopes(SGCMGs) of spacecraft in a periodic orbit. To this end, a disturbance observer based on neural network is developed for active anti-disturbance, so as to improve the accuracy of fault diagnosis.The periodic disturbance on orbit can be decoupled with fault by resorting to the fitting and memory ability of neural network. Subsequ...     

Decentralized adaptive sliding mode control of a space robot actuated by control moment gyroscopes

An adaptive sliding mode control(ASMC) law is proposed in decentralized scheme for trajectory tracking control of a new concept space robot.Each joint of the system is a free ball joint capable of rotating with three degrees of freedom(DOF).A cluster of control moment gyroscopes(CMGs) is mounted on each link and the base to actuate the system.The modified Rodrigues parameters(MRPs) are employed to describe the angular displacements,and the equations of motion are derived using Kane's equations.The controller for each link or the base is designed separately in decentralized scheme.The unknown disturbances,inertia parameter uncertainties and nonlinear uncertainties are classified as a ‘‘lumped" matched uncertainty with unknown upper bound,and a continuous sliding mode control(SMC) law is proposed,in which the control gain is tuned by the improved adaptation laws for the upper bound on norm of the uncertainty.A general amplification function is designed and incorporated in the adaptation laws to reduce the control error without conspicuously increasing the magnitude of the control input.Uniformly ultimate boundedness of the closed loop system is proved by Lyapunov's method.Simulation results based on a three-link system verify the effectiveness of the proposed controller.     

Closed-loop dynamic control allocation for aircraft with multiple actuators

A closed-loop control allocation method is proposed for a class of aircraft with multiple actuators. Nonlinear dynamic inversion is used to design the baseline attitude controller and derive the desired moment increment. And a feedback loop for the moment increment produced by the deflections of actuators is added to the angular rate loop, then the error between the desired and actual moment increment is the input of the dynamic control allocation. Subsequently, the stability of the closed-loop dynamic control allocation system is analyzed in detail. Especially, the closedloop system stability is also analyzed in the presence of two types of actuator failures: loss of effectiveness and lock-in-place actuator failures, where a fault detection subsystem to identify the actuator failures is absent. Finally, the proposed method is applied to a canard rotor/wing (CRW) aircraft model in fixed-wing mode, which has multiple actuators for flight control. The nonlinear simulation demonstrates that this method can guarantee the stability and tracking performance whether the actuators are healthy or fail.     

Friction compensation for low velocity control of hydraulic flight motion simulator: A simple adaptive robust approach

Low-velocity tracking capability is a key performance of flight motion simulator (FMS), which is mainly affected by the nonlinear friction force. Though many compensation schemes with ad hoc friction models have been proposed, this paper deals with low-velocity control without friction model, since it is easy to be implemented in practice. Firstly, a nonlinear model of the FMS middle frame, which is driven by a hydraulic rotary actuator, is built. Noting that in the low velocity region, the unmodeled friction force is mainly characterized by a changing-slowly part, thus a simple adaptive law can be employed to learn this changing-slowly part and compensate it. To guarantee the boundedness of adaptation process, a discontinuous projection is utilized and then a robust scheme is proposed. The controller achieves a prescribed output tracking transient performance and final tracking accuracy in general while obtaining asymptotic output tracking in the absence of modeling errors. In addition, a saturated projection adaptive scheme is proposed to improve the globally learning capability when the velocity becomes large, which might make the previous proposed projection-based adaptive law be unstable. Theoretical and extensive experimental results are obtained to verify the high-performance nature of the proposed adaptive robust control strategy.     

Attitude synchronization for multiple spacecraft with input constraints

The attitude synchronization problem for multiple spacecraft with input constraints is investigated in this paper. Two distributed control laws are presented and analyzed. First, by intro- ducing bounded function, a distributed asymptotically stable control law is proposed. Such a con- trol scheme can guarantee attitude synchronization and the control inputs of each spacecraft can be a priori bounded regardless of the number of its neighbors. Then, based on graph theory, homoge- neous method, and Lyapunov stability theory, a distributed finite-time control law is designed. Rig- orous proof shows that attitude synchronization of multiple spacecraft can be achieved in finite time, and the control scheme satisfies input saturation requirement. Finally, numerical simulations are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness and feasibility of the oroDosed schemes.     

An optimization method for metamorphic mechanisms based on multidisciplinary design optimization

The optimization of metamorphic mechanisms is different from that of the conventional mechanisms for its characteristics of multi-configuration. There exist complex coupled design variables and constraints in its multiple different configuration optimization models. To achieve the compatible optimized results of these coupled design variables, an optimization method for metamorphic mechanisms is developed in the paper based on the principle of multidisciplinary design optimization（MDO）. Firstly, the optimization characteristics of the metamorphic mechanism are summarized distinctly by proposing the classification of design variables and constraints as well as coupling interactions among its different configuration optimization models. Further, collaborative optimization technique which is used in MDO is adopted for achieving the overall optimization performance. The whole optimization process is then proposed by constructing a two-level hierarchical scheme with global optimizer and configuration optimizer loops. The method is demonstrated by optimizing a planar five-bar metamorphic mechanism which has two configurations,and results show that it can achieve coordinated optimization results for the same parameters in different configuration optimization models.     

Flight safety measurements of UAVs in congested airspace

Describing spatial safety status is crucial for high-density air traffic involving multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in a complex environment. A probabilistic approach is proposed to measure safety situation in congested airspace. The occupancy distribution of the airspace is represented with conflict probability between spatial positions and UAV. The concept of a safety envelope related to flight performance and response time is presented first instead of the conventional fixed-size protected zones around aircraft. Consequently, the conflict probability is performance-dependent, and effects of various UAVs on safety can be distinguished. The uncer-tainty of a UAV future position is explicitly accounted for as Brownian motion. An analytic approximate algorithm for the conflict probability is developed to decrease the computational consumption. The relationship between safety and flight performance are discussed for different response times and prediction intervals. To illustrate the applications of the approach, an experi-ment of three UAVs in formation flight is performed. In addition, an example of trajectory planning is simulated for one UAV flying over airspace where five UAVs exist. The validation of the approach shows its potential in guaranteeing flight safety in highly dynamic environment.     

PI controller relay auto-tuning using delay and phase margin in PMSM drives

This paper presents an auto-tuning method for a proportion plus integral（PI） controller for permanent magnet synchronous motor（PMSM） drives, which is supposed to be embedded in electro-mechanical actuator（EMA） control module in aircraft. The method, based on a relay feedback with variable delay time, explores different critical points of the system frequency response.The Nyquist points of the plant can then be derived from the delay time and filter time constant.The coefficients of the PI controller can then be obtained by calculation while shifting the Nyquist point to a specific position to obtain the required phase margin. The major advantage of the autotuning method is that it can provide a series of tuning results for different system bandwidths and damping ratios, corresponding to the specification for delay time and phase margin. Simulation and experimental results for the PMSM controller verify the performance of both the current loop and the speed loop auto-tuning.     

Numerical investigation of aerodynamic flow actuation produced by surface plasma actuator on 2D oscillating airfoil

Numerical simulation of unsteady flow control over an oscillating NACA0012 airfoil is investigated. Flow actuation of a turbulent flow over the airfoil is provided by low current DC surface glow discharge plasma actuator which is analytically modeled as an ion pressure force produced in the cathode sheath region. The modeled plasma actuator has an induced pressure force of about 2 k Pa under a typical experiment condition and is placed on the airfoil surface at 0% chord length and/or at 10% chord length. The plasma actuator at deep-stall angles(from 5° to 25°) is able to slightly delay a dynamic stall and to weaken a pressure fluctuation in down-stroke motion. As a result, the wake region is reduced. The actuation effect varies with different plasma pulse frequencies, actuator locations and reduced frequencies. A lift coefficient can increase up to 70% by a selective operation of the plasma actuator with various plasma frequencies and locations as the angle of attack changes. Active flow control which is a key advantageous feature of the plasma actuator reveals that a dynamic stall phenomenon can be controlled by the surface plasma actuator with less power consumption if a careful control scheme of the plasma actuator is employed with the optimized plasma pulse frequency and actuator location corresponding to a dynamic change in reduced frequency.     

Sliding mode control of reaction flywheel-based brushless DC motor with buck converter

Reaction flywheel is a significant actuator for satellites’ attitude control. To improve output torque and rotational speed accuracy for reaction flywheel, this paper reviews the modeling and control approaches of DC-DC converters and presents an application of the variable structure system theory with associated sliding regimes. Firstly, the topology of reaction flywheel is constructed. The small signal linearization process for a buck converter is illustrated. Then, based on the state averaging models and reaching qualification expressed by the Lee derivative, the general results of the sliding mode control (SMC) are analyzed. The analytical equivalent control laws for reaction flywheel are deduced detailedly by selecting various sliding surfaces at electromotion, energy consumption braking, reverse connection braking stages. Finally, numerical and experimental examples are presented for illustrative purposes. The results demonstrate that favorable agreement is established between the simulations and experiments. The proposed control strategy achieves preferable rotational speed regulation, strong rejection of modest disturbances, and high-precision output torque and rotational speed tracking abilities.     

Dynamic modeling of a hose-drogue aerial refueling system and integral sliding mode backstepping control for the hose whipping phenomenon

Dynamic modeling of a hose-drogue aerial refueling system（HDARS） and an integral sliding mode backstepping controller design for the hose whipping phenomenon（HWP） during probe-drogue coupling are studied. Firstly, a dynamic model of the variable-length hose-drogue assembly is built for the sake of exploiting suppression methods for the whipping phenomenon.Based on the lumped parameter method, the hose is modeled by a series of variable-length links connected with frictionless joints. A set of iterative equations of the hose＇s three-dimensional motion is derived subject to hose reeling in/out, tanker motion, gravity, and aerodynamic loads accounting for the effects of steady wind, atmospheric turbulence, and tanker wake. Secondly,relying on a permanent magnet synchronous motor and high-precision position sensors, a new active control strategy for the HWP on the basis of the relative position between the tanker and the receiver is proposed. Considering the strict-feedback configuration of the permanent magnet synchronous motor, a rotor position control law based on the backstepping method is designed to insure global stability. An integral of the rotor position error and an exponential sliding mode reaching law of the current errors are applied to enhance control accuracy and robustness. Finally,the simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed model and control laws.     

Attitude Control Considering Variable Input Saturation Limit for a Spacecraft Equipped with Flywheels

A new attitude controller is proposed for spacecraft whose actuator has variable input saturation limit. There are three identical flywheels orthogonally mounted on board. Each rotor is driven by a brushless DC motor (BLDCM). Models of spacecraft attitude dynamics and flywheel rotor driving motor electromechanics are discussed in detail. The controller design is similar to saturation limit linear assignment. An auxiliary parameter and a boundary coefficient are imported into the controller to guarantee system stability and improve control performance. A time-varying and state-dependent flywheel output torque saturation limit model is established. Stability of the closed-loop control system and asymptotic convergence of system states are proved via Lyapunov methods and LaSalle invariance principle. Boundedness of the auxiliary parameter ensures that the control objective can be achieved, while the boundary parameter’s value makes a balance between system control performance and flywheel utilization efficiency. Compared with existing controllers, the newly developed controller with variable torque saturation limit can bring smoother control and faster system response. Numerical simulations validate the effectiveness of the controller.