Controls and Control Theory Commons^™

Rigid Body Attitude Estimation: An Overview And Comparative Study, Nojan Madinehi

University of Western Ontario - Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The attitude estimation of rigid body systems has attracted the attention of many researchers over the years. The development of efficient estimation algorithms that can accurately estimate the orientation of a rigid body is a crucial step towards a reliable implementation of control schemes for underwater and flying vehicles.

The primary focus of this thesis consists in investigating various attitude estimation techniques and their applications.

Two major classes are discussed. The first class consists of the earliest static attitude determination techniques relying solely on a set of body vector measurements of known vectors in the inertial frame. The second class ...

Active Optimal Control Strategies For Increasing The Efficiency Of Photovoltaic Cells, Sharif Aljoaba

Theses and Dissertations--Electrical and Computer Engineering

Energy consumption has increased drastically during the last century. Currently, the worldwide energy consumption is about 17.4 TW and is predicted to reach 25 TW by 2035. Solar energy has emerged as one of the potential renewable energy sources. Since its first physical recognition in 1887 by Adams and Day till nowadays, research in solar energy is continuously developing. This has lead to many achievements and milestones that introduced it as one of the most reliable and sustainable energy sources. Recently, the International Energy Agency declared that solar energy is predicted to be one of the major electricity production ...

Exploration Of Neural Structures For Dynamic System Control, Scott Frederick Hansen

Masters Theses

Biological neural systems are powerful mechanisms for controlling biological sys- tems. While the complexity of biological neural networks makes exact simulation intractable, several key aspects lend themselves to implementation on computational systems.

This thesis constructs a discrete event neural network simulation that implements aspects of biological neural networks. A combined genetic programming/simulated annealing approach is utilized to design network structures that function as regulators for continuous time dynamic systems in the presence of process noise when simulated using a discrete event neural simulation.

Methods of constructing such networks are analyzed including examination of the final network structure and the ...

Control Design And Filtering For Wireless Networked Systems, Xiao Ma

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is concerned with estimation and control over wireless networked systems. Several problems are addressed, including estimator design over packet loss links, control and estimation over cognitive radio systems, modeling and prediction of wireless sensor networks (WSNs), and localization with the Theater Positioning System (TPS). The first problem addressed is the state estimation of a discrete-time system through a packet loss link modeled by a Bernoulli random variable. The optimal filter is derived by employing exact hybrid filtering. The performance of the optimal filter is illustrated by numerical simulations. Next, we consider the problem of estimation and control over ...

Event-Based Green Scheduling Of Radiant Systems In Buildings, Truong X. Nghiem, George Pappas, Rahul Mangharam

Real-Time and Embedded Systems Lab (mLAB)

This paper looks at the problem of peak power demand reduction for intermittent operation of radiant systems in buildings. Uncoordinated operation of the circulation pumps of a multi-zone hydronic radiant system can cause temporally correlated electricity demand surges when multiple pumps are activated simultaneously. Under a demand-based electricity pricing policy, this uncoordinated behavior can result in high electricity costs and expensive system operation. We have previously presented Green Scheduling with the periodic scheduling approach for reducing the peak power demand of electric radiant heating systems while maintaining indoor thermal comfort. This paper develops an event-based state feedback scheduling strategy that ...

Networked Realization Of Discrete-Time Controllers, Fei Miao, Miroslav Pajic, Rahul Mangharam, George Pappas

Real-Time and Embedded Systems Lab (mLAB)

We study the problem of mapping discrete-time linear controllers into potentially higher order linear controllers with predefined structural constraints. Our work has been motivated by the Wireless Control Network (WCN) architecture, where the network itself behaves as a distributed, structured dynamical compensator. We make connections to model reduction theory to derive a method for the controller embedding based on minimization of the H∞-norm of the error system. This allows us to frame the problem as synthesis of optimal structured linear controllers, which enables the utilization of design-time iterative procedures for systems’ approximation. Finally, we illustrate the use of the ...

The Modeling, Analysis And Control Of Resilient Manufacturing Enterprises, Yao Hu

Theses and Dissertations--Electrical and Computer Engineering

The resilience of manufacturing enterprises is an important research topic, since disruptions have severe effects on the normal operation of manufacturing enterprises, especially as manufacturing supply chains become global. Although many case studies have been carried out to address resilience in organizations, a systematic method to model and analyze the resilience dynamics in manufacturing enterprises is not well developed. This study is intended to conduct research on quantitative analysis and control for resilience.

After reviewing the literature addressing resilience, a modeling framework is presented to characterize the resilience of a manufacturing enterprise responding to disruptive events, which includes inventory ow ...

A Dual-Rate Model Predictive Controller For Fieldbus Based Distributed Control Systems, Mohammad Arif Hossain

University of Western Ontario - Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In modern Distributed Control Systems (DCS), an industrial computer network protocol known as fieldbus is used in chemical, petro-chemical and other process industries for real-time communication between digital controllers, sensors, actuators and other smart devices. In a closed-loop digital control system, data is transferred from sensor to controller and controller to actuator cyclically in a timely but discontinuous fashion at a specific rate known as sampling-rate or macrocycle through fieldbus. According to the current trend of fieldbus technology, in most industrial control systems, the sampling-rate or macrocycle is fixed at the time of system configuration. This fixed sampling-rate makes it ...

Distributed Control Of Multi-Agent Systems With Switching Topology, Delay, And Link Failure, Rasoul Ghadami

Electrical Engineering Dissertations

From ecology and evolutionary biology to social sciences, and from systems and control theory to aerospace and wireless sensor networks, researchers have been trying to develop an understanding of how a group of moving objects such as flocks of birds, schools of fish and crowds of people can perform collective tasks such as reaching a consensus or moving in a formation without centralized coordination. Researchers in the fields of robotics and control theory have also become interested in cooperative control of multi-agent systems such as a group of unmanned vehicles due to its vast variety of applications. This dissertation focuses ...

Time-Triggered Implementations Of Dynamic Controllers, Truong X. Nghiem, George J. Pappas, Rajeev Alur, Antoine Girard

Departmental Papers (ESE)

Bridging the gap between model-based design and platform-based implementation is one of the critical challenges for embedded software systems. In the context of embedded control systems that interact with an environment, a variety of errors due to quantization, delays, and scheduling policies may generate executable code that does not faithfully implement the model-based design. In this paper, we show that the performance gap between the model-level semantics of linear dynamic controllers, e.g. the proportional- integral-derivative (PID) controllers, and their implementation-level semantics can be rigorously quantified if the controller implementation is executed on a predictable time-triggered architecture. Our technical approach ...

Design Of An Adaptive Cruise Control Model For Hybrid Systems Fault Diagnosis, Benjamin Breimer

Open Access Dissertations and Theses

Driver Assistance Systems like Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) can help prevent accidents by reducing the workload on the driver. However, this can only be accomplished if the driver can rely on the system to perform safely even in the presence of faults.

In this thesis we develop an Adaptive Cruise Control model that will be used to investigate Hybrid Systems Fault Diagnosis techniques. System Identification is performed upon an electric motor to obtain its transfer function. This electric motor belongs to a 1/10th scale RC car that is being used as part of a test bench for the Adaptive ...

Duopoly Pricing Game In Networks With Local Coordination Effects, Arastoo Fazeli, Ali Jadbabaie

Departmental Papers (ESE)

In this paper, we study a duopoly pricing problem in which two firms compete for selling two products in a network. Our proposed model consists of two stages. In the first stage, firms set the price they charge agents for their product and the quality of the product they offer. For agents, the quality of the product can be interpreted as the payoff of a local coordination game played among them in the network. In the second stage, agents in the network decide what fraction of these two products to purchase. We first characterize the Nash equilibrium of the game ...

Game Theoretic Analysis Of A Strategic Model Of Competitive Contagion And Product Adoption In Social Networks, Arastoo Fazeli, Ali Jadbabaie

Departmental Papers (ESE)

In this paper we propose and study a strategic model of marketing and product adoption in social networks. Two firms compete for the spread of their products in a social network. Considering their fixed budgets, they initially determine the payoff of their products and the number of their initial seeds in a network. Afterwards, neighboring agents play a local coordination game over a fixed network which determines the dynamics of the spreading. Assuming myopic best response dynamics, agents choose a product based on the payoff received by actions of their neighbors. This local update dynamics results in a game-theoretic diffusion ...

Targeted Marketing And Seeding Products With Positive Externality, Arastoo Fazeli, Ali Jadbabaie

Departmental Papers (ESE)

We study a strategic model of marketing in social networks in which two firms compete for the spread of their products. Firms initially determine the production cost of their product, which results in the payoff of the product for consumers, and the number and the location of the consumers in a network who receive the product as a free offer. Consumers play a local coordination game over a fixed network which determines the dynamics of the spreading of products. Assuming myopic best response dynamics, consumers choose a product based on the payoff received by actions of their neighbors. This local ...

Multi-Agent Flocking With Random Communication Radius, Samuel Martin, Arastoo Fazeli, Ali Jadbabaie, Antoine Girard

Departmental Papers (ESE)

In this paper, we consider a multi-agent system consisting of mobile agents with second-order dynamics. The communication network is determined by a metric rule based on a random interaction range. The goal of this paper is to determine a bound on the probability that the agents asymptotically agree on a common velocity (i.e. a flocking behavior is achieved). This bound should depend on practical conditions (on the initial positions and velocities of agents) only. For this purpose, we exhibit an i.i.d. process bounding the original system’s dynamics. We build upon previous work on multi-agent systems with ...

Consensus Over Martingale Graph Processes, Arastoo Fazeli, Ali Jadbabaie

Departmental Papers (ESE)

In this paper, we consider a consensus seeking process based on repeated averaging in a randomly changing network. The underlying graph of such a network at each time is generated by a martingale random process. We prove that consensus is reached almost surely if and only if the expected graph of the network contains a directed spanning tree. We then provide an example of a consensus seeking process based on local averaging of opinions in a dynamic model of social network formation which is a martingale. At each time step, individual agents randomly choose some other agents to interact with ...

Protodrive: An Experimental Platform For Electric Vehicle Energy Scheduling And Control, Stephanie Diaz, Harsh Jain, Yash Pant, William Price, Rahul Mangharam

Real-Time and Embedded Systems Lab (mLAB)

No abstract provided.

Development Of A Novel Handheld Device For Active Compensation Of Physiological Tremor, Abhijit Saxena

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In microsurgery, the human hand imposes certain limitations in accurately positioning the tip of a device such as scalpel. Any errors in the motion of the hand make microsurgical procedures difficult and involuntary motions such as hand tremors can make some procedures significantly difficult to perform. This is particularly true in the case of vitreoretinal microsurgery. The most familiar source of involuntary motion is physiological tremor. Real-time compensation of tremor is, therefore, necessary to assist surgeons to precisely position and manipulate the tool-tip to accurately perform a microsurgery. In this thesis, a novel handheld device (AID) is described for compensation ...

Mle+: A Tool For Integrated Design And Deployment Of Energy Efficient Building Controls, Willy Bernal, Madhur Behl, Truong Nghiem, Rahul Mangharam

Real-Time and Embedded Systems Lab (mLAB)

We present MLE+, a tool for energy-efficient building automation design, co-simulation and analysis. The tool leverages the high-fidelity building simulation capabilities of EnergyPlus and the scientific computation and design capabilities of Matlab for controller design. MLE+ facilitates integrated building simulation and controller formulation with integrated support for system identification, control design, optimization, simulation analysis and communication between software applications and building equipment. It provides streamlined workflows, a graphical front-end, and debugging support to help control engineers eliminate design and programming errors and take informed decisions early in the design stage, leading to fewer iterations in the building automation development cycle ...

Preoperative Planning Of Robotics-Assisted Minimally Invasive Cardiac Surgery Under Uncertainty, Hamidreza Azimian

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In this thesis, a computational framework for patient-specific preoperative planning of Robotics-Assisted Minimally Invasive Cardiac Surgery (RAMICS) is developed. It is expected that preoperative planning of RAMICS will improve the rate of success by considering robot kinematics, patient-specific thoracic anatomy, and procedure-specific intraoperative conditions. Given the significant anatomical features localized in the preoperative computed tomography images of a patient's thorax, port locations and robot orientations (with respect to the patient's body coordinate frame) are determined to optimize characteristics such as dexterity, reachability, tool approach angles and maneuverability. In this thesis, two approaches for preoperative planning of RAMICS are ...