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Full-Text Articles in Controls and Control Theory

Resilience For Multi-Filter All-Source Navigation Framework With Integrity, Jonathon S. Gipson, Robert C. Leishman Jan 2021

Resilience For Multi-Filter All-Source Navigation Framework With Integrity, Jonathon S. Gipson, Robert C. Leishman

Faculty Publications

The Autonomous and Resilient Management of All-source Sensors (ARMAS) framework monitors residual-space test statistics across unique sensor-exclusion banks of filters, (known as subfilters) to provide a resilient, fault-resistant all-source navigation architecture with assurance. A critical assumption of this architecture, demonstrated in this paper, is fully overlapping state observability across all subfilters. All-source sensors, particularly those that only provide partial state information (altimeters, TDoA, AOB, etc.) do not intrinsically meet this requirement.
This paper presents a novel method to monitor real-time overlapping position state observability and introduces an "observability bank" within the ARMAS framework, known as Stable Observability Monitoring (SOM). SOM …


An Analytic Study Of Pursuit Strategies, Mark E. Vlassakis Mar 2020

An Analytic Study Of Pursuit Strategies, Mark E. Vlassakis

Theses and Dissertations

The Two-on-One pursuit-evasion differential game is revisited where the holonomic players have equal speed, and the two pursuers are endowed with a circular capture range ℓ > 0. Then, the case where the pursuers' capture ranges are unequal, ℓ1 > ℓ2 ≥ 0, is analyzed. In both cases, the state space region where capture is guaranteed is delineated and the optimal feedback strategies are synthesized. Next, pure pursuit is considered whereupon the terminal separation between a pursuer and an equal-speed evader less than the pursuer's capture range ℓ > 0. The case with two pursuers employing pure pursuit is considered, and …


Real-Time Path Planning In Constrained, Uncertain Environments, Randall Christensen, Robert C. Leishman Jan 2019

Real-Time Path Planning In Constrained, Uncertain Environments, Randall Christensen, Robert C. Leishman

Faculty Publications

A key enabler of autonomous vehicles is the ability to plan the path of the vehicle to accomplish mission objectives. To be robust to realistic environments, path planners must account for uncertainty in the trajectory of the vehicle as well as uncertainty in the location of obstacles. The uncertainty in the trajectory of the vehicle is a difficult quantity to estimate, and is influenced by coupling between the vehicle dynamics, guidance, navigation, and control system as well as any disturbances acting on the vehicle. Monte Carlo analysis is the conventional approach to determine vehicle dispersion, while accounting for the coupled …


Improvements For Vision-Based Navigation Of Small, Fixed-Wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, Robert C. Leishman, Jeremy Gray, John F. Raquet, Adam Rutkowski Jul 2018

Improvements For Vision-Based Navigation Of Small, Fixed-Wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, Robert C. Leishman, Jeremy Gray, John F. Raquet, Adam Rutkowski

Faculty Publications

Investigating alternative navigation approaches for use when GPS signals are unavailable is an active area of research across the globe. In this paper we focus on the navigation of small, fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that employ vision-based approaches combined with other measurements as a replacement for GPS. We demonstrate with flight test data that vehicle attitude information, derived from cheap, MEMS-based IMUs is sufficient to improve two different types of vision processing algorithms. Secondly, we show analytically and with flight test data that range measurements to one other vehicle with global pose is sufficient to constrain the global drift …


Multi-Objective Constraint Satisfaction For Mobile Robot Area Defense, Kenneth W. Mayo Mar 2010

Multi-Objective Constraint Satisfaction For Mobile Robot Area Defense, Kenneth W. Mayo

Theses and Dissertations

In developing multi-robot cooperative systems, there are often competing objectives that need to be met. For example in automating area defense systems, multiple robots must work together to explore the entire area, and maintain consistent communications to alert the other agents and ensure trust in the system. This research presents an algorithm that tasks robots to meet the two specific goals of exploration and communication maintenance in an uncoordinated environment reducing the need for a user to pre-balance the objectives. This multi-objective problem is defined as a constraint satisfaction problem solved using the Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm II (NSGA-II). Both …


Unified Behavior Framework In An Embedded Robot Controller, Stephen S. Lin Mar 2009

Unified Behavior Framework In An Embedded Robot Controller, Stephen S. Lin

Theses and Dissertations

Robots of varying autonomy have been used to take the place of humans in dangerous tasks. While robots are considered more expendable than human beings, they are complex to develop and expensive to replace if lost. Recent technological advances produce small, inexpensive hardware platforms that are powerful enough to match robots from just a few years ago. There are many types of autonomous control architecture that can be used to control these hardware platforms. One in particular, the Unified Behavior Framework, is a flexible, responsive control architecture that is designed to simplify the control system’s design process through behavior module …


Centralized Cooperative Control For Route Surveillance With Constant Communication, Joseph D. Rosal Mar 2009

Centralized Cooperative Control For Route Surveillance With Constant Communication, Joseph D. Rosal

Theses and Dissertations

The route surveillance mission is a new application of unmanned aircraft systems (UASs) to meet the reconnaissance and surveillance requirements of combatant commanders. The new mission intends to field a UAS consisting of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that can provide day and night surveillance of convoy routes. This research focuses on developing a solution strategy for the mission based on the application of optimal control and cooperative control theory. The route surveillance controller uses the UAS team size to divide the route into individual sectors for each entity. A specifically designed cost function and path constraints are used to formulate …


Model-Based Control Using Model And Mechanization Fusion Techniques For Image-Aided Navigation, Constance D. Hendrix Mar 2009

Model-Based Control Using Model And Mechanization Fusion Techniques For Image-Aided Navigation, Constance D. Hendrix

Theses and Dissertations

Unmanned aerial vehicles are no longer used for just reconnaissance. Current requirements call for smaller autonomous vehicles that replace the human in high-risk activities. Many times these activities are performed in GPS-degraded environments. Without GPS providing today's most accurate navigation solution, autonomous navigation in tight areas is more difficult. Today, image-aided navigation is used and other methods are explored to more accurately navigate in such areas (e.g., indoors). This thesis explores the use of inertial measurements and navigation solution updates using cameras with a model-based Linear Quadratic Gaussian controller. To demonstrate the methods behind this research, the controller will provide …


Adaptive Control Of Woofer-Tweeter Adaptive Optics, Jimmie J. Perez Feb 2009

Adaptive Control Of Woofer-Tweeter Adaptive Optics, Jimmie J. Perez

Theses and Dissertations

Adaptive optics applies advanced sensing and control to improve the ability of optical systems to collect images through a turbulent atmosphere. The results of this research effort demonstrate that the combination of two recent approaches improves the performance of adaptive optics in directed energy and laser communication scenarios. The first approach is adaptive control, which offers improved performance over fixed-gain controllers in the presence of rapidly changing turbulence. The second approach incorporated into the study is a dual-mirror system. The two mirrors are a high-bandwidth, low-actuator-stroke (tweeter) mirror and a low-bandwidth, large actuator-stroke (woofer) mirror. The woofer-tweeter combination allows for …


Stochastic Estimation And Control Of Queues Within A Computer Network, Nathan C. Stuckey Mar 2007

Stochastic Estimation And Control Of Queues Within A Computer Network, Nathan C. Stuckey

Theses and Dissertations

An extended Kalman filter is used to estimate size and packet arrival rate of network queues. These estimates are used by a LQG steady state linear perturbation PI controller to regulate queue size within a computer network. This paper presents the derivation of the transient queue behavior for a system with Poisson traffic and exponential service times. This result is then validated for ideal traffic using a network simulated in OPNET. A more complex OPNET model is then used to test the adequacy of the transient queue size model when non-Poisson traffic is combined. The extended Kalman filter theory is …


Phugoid Damping Control, Nicolas J. Schindeler Mar 2001

Phugoid Damping Control, Nicolas J. Schindeler

Theses and Dissertations

A novel phugoid damping control design methodology is developed, based on the use of wind axes and a point-mass aircraft model. The state variables are air speed, flight path angle, and heading angle, the control variables are thrust setting, angle of attack, bank angle, and sideslip angle, and the command signals are airspeed, flight path angle, and heading angle or heading rate. All the variables and parameters are nondimensionalized. A multivariable set point controller is developed which consists of: (1) a trim calculation-based nonlinear feed-forward control computer; thus, given a commanded new trim state (air speed, flight path angle, and …