Controls and Control Theory Commons^™

Adaptive Personalized Drug Delivery Method For Warfarin And Anemia Management: Modeling And Control., Affan Affan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Personalized precision medicine aims to develop the appropriate treatments for suitable patients at the right time to obtain optimal results. Personalized medicine is challenging due to inter- and intra-patient variability, narrow therapeutic window, the effect of other medications, comorbidity (more than one disease at a time), nonlinear patient dynamics, and time-varying patient dose response characteristics which include bleeding (internal and external). This research aims to develop a framework for an adaptive personalized modeling and control method with minimum clinical patient specific dose response data for optimal drug dosing. The proposed methodology is applied to anemia and warfarin management. It is …

Modeling, Simulation And Control Of Microrobots For The Microfactory., Zhong Yang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Future assembly technologies will involve higher levels of automation in order to satisfy increased microscale or nanoscale precision requirements. Traditionally, assembly using a top-down robotic approach has been well-studied and applied to the microelectronics and MEMS industries, but less so in nanotechnology. With the boom of nanotechnology since the 1990s, newly designed products with new materials, coatings, and nanoparticles are gradually entering everyone’s lives, while the industry has grown into a billion-dollar volume worldwide. Traditionally, nanotechnology products are assembled using bottom-up methods, such as self-assembly, rather than top-down robotic assembly. This is due to considerations of volume handling of large …

Power System Dynamic Control And Performance Improvement Based On Reinforcement Learning, Wei Gao

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation investigates the feasibility and effectiveness of using Reinforcement Learning (RL) techniques for power system dynamic control, particularly voltage and frequency control. The conventional control strategies used in power systems are complex and time-consuming due to the complicated high-order nonlinearities of the system. RL, which is a type of neural network-based technique, has shown promise in solving these complex problems by fitting any nonlinear system with the proper network structure.

The proposed RL algorithm, called Guided Surrogate Gradient-based Evolution Strategy (GSES) determines the weights of the policy (which generates the action for our control reference signal) without back-propagation process …

Enhancing Traffic Safety In Unpredicted Environments With Integration Of Adas Features With Sensor Fusion In Intelligent Electric Vehicle Platform With Implementation Of Environmental Mapping Technology, David S. Obando Ortegon

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A major objective on society is to reduce the number of accidents and fatalities on the road for drivers, and pedestrians. Therefore, the automotive engineering field is working on this problem through the development and integration of safety technologies such as advanced driving assistance systems. For this reason, this work was intended to develop and evaluate the performance of different ADAS features and IV technologies under unexpected scenarios. This by the development of safety algorithms applied to the intelligent electric vehicle designed and built in this work, through the use of ADAS sensors based on sensor fusion. Evaluation of AEB, …

Design And Fabrication Of A Force-Displacement Control Mechanism For Bone-Surgical Tool Testing, Kenneth Nwagu

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project focuses on the design and fabrication of an experimental setup for orthopedic-tool testing, tailored for a surgical instrumentation company. The multifaceted project encompasses a literature review, conceptual design, prototyping, and rigorous testing, resulting in a versatile control system capable of assessing various orthopedic tools, including bone drills, saws, burrs, and power handpieces.

Orthopedic surgical procedures (which include cutting and/or drilling into bone) often need to be performed on bones for faster recovery. The drilling and cutting process can cause an increase in temperature at the cutting site which can cause bone necrosis. The tools also need to be …

Nonlinear Observers For Burning Zone Temperatures And Torque Estimation Of The Rotary Cement Kiln., Bhagyashri Aditya Bhagwat

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Due to consistent expansion in the infrastructure and housing sectors worldwide have given a new way for the rapid growth of global cement market. Increased global demand for the cement production makes the attractive research topic which can lead to the quality and overall efficiency of the product. Measurement of the temperature in the burning zone is vital to maintain product quality and kiln efficiency in the cement industry. Often the BZT is un-measurable due to internal kiln conditions, dusty environment, extreme heat, harshness for example and this leads to kiln not being driven as efficient as possible. Multi-physics tools …

Automatic Testing Of Organic Strain Gauge Tactile Sensors., Brian P. Goulet

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Human-Robot Interaction is a developing field of science, that is posed to augment everything we do in life. Skin sensors that can detect touch, temperature, distance, and other physical interaction parameters at the human-robot interface are very important to enhancing the collaboration between humans and machines. As such, these sensors must be efficiently tested and characterized to give accurate feedback from the sensor to the robot. The objective of this work is to create a diversified software testing suite that removes as much human intervention as possible. The tests and methodology discussed here provide multiple realistic scenarios that the sensors …

Collaborative Human-Machine Interfaces For Mobile Manipulators., Shamsudeen Olawale Abubakar

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The use of mobile manipulators in service industries as both agents in physical Human Robot Interaction (pHRI) and for social interactions has been on the increase in recent times due to necessities like compensating for workforce shortages and enabling safer and more efficient operations amongst other reasons. Collaborative robots, or co-bots, are robots that are developed for use with human interaction through direct contact or close proximity in a shared space with the human users. The work presented in this dissertation focuses on the design, implementation and analysis of components for the next-generation collaborative human machine interfaces (CHMI) needed for …

Active Blade Pitch And Hull-Based Structural Control Of Floating Offshore Wind Turbines, Eben Lenfest

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Floating offshore wind turbines (FOWTs) have the potential to bring renewable energy to waters too deep for traditional offshore wind turbines while still being able to harness strong coastal winds in areas near population centers. However, these floating wind turbines come at a higher capital cost relative to fixed foundations and are more susceptible to vibrations induced by waves. Advances in control technologies offer the potential to reduce fatigue loads due to these vibrations, extending the life of the platform and thereby spreading the capital costs of the turbine over a longer period of time. One such advance is in …

Adaptive Control And Parameter-Dependent Anti-Windup Compensation For Inertia Varying Quadcopters., Benjamin Edwards Farber

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A novel parameter-dependent anti-windup compensator is developed to improve the performance of a saturation constrained model reference adaptive controller. The combined control structure solves the input saturation and stability problem for inertia varying quadcopters. The control synthesis follows the conventional two-step anti-windup design paradigm where a nominal controller is designed without consideration of the input saturation, and the anti-windup compensator is designed to minimize deviations from nominal performance caused by saturated inputs. To account for varying inertia of the quadcopter during package retrieval/delivery routines, the inertia parameters of the vehicle/package are estimated with an online recursive system identification technique, and …

Nonlinear Control And Observation Of Full-Variable Speed Wind Turbine Systems., Nicholas Hawkins

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

With increasing concern for the environmental effects of power generation from fossil fuels, wind energy is a competitive source for electrical power with higher efficiency than other clean sources. However, the nature of this power source makes controlling wind turbines difficult. The variability of wind as a source either requires highly accurate measurement equipment or sophisticated mathematical alternatives. In addition to the unknown quantities of the weather itself, the efficiency of power capture at the turbine blades is highly nonlinear in nature and difficult to ascertain. The ability of either determine these troublesome quantities, or control the system despite ignorance …

Model-Based Control Methods To Improve The Power Qualify Of Grid-Connected Single-Phase Inverters., Moath Alqatamin

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Power electronic converters are commonly used for interfacing distributing generation sources (DGs) to the electrical power system networks. This is necessary because these DGs usually have different output characteristics and cannot be connected directly to the local load and/or the grid. The power electronic front-end converter is an inverter whose dc link is fed by an ac/dc converter or by a dc/dc converter, according to the DG source type. The commercial front-end inverters are designed to operate either in grid-connected (GC) mode or in stand-alone (SA) mode. In the SA mode, the inverter is connected to local load, but in …

Design, Construction, Energy Modeling, And Navigation Of A Six-Wheeled Differential Drive Robot To Deliver Medical Supplies Inside Hospitals, Makhluk Hossain Prio

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Differential drive mobile robots have been the most ubiquitous kind of robots for the last few decades. As each of the wheels of a differential drive mobile robot can be controlled, it provides additional flexibility to the end-users in creating new applications. These applications include personal assistance, security, warehouse and distribution applications, ocean and space exploration, etc. In a clinic or hospital, the delivery of medicines and patients’ records are frequently needed activities. Medical personnel often find these activities repetitive and time-consuming. Our research was to design, construct, produce an energy model, and develop a navigation control method for a …

Adaptive Physical Human-Robot Interaction (Phri) With A Robotic Nursing Assistant., Sumit Kumar Das

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Recently, more and more robots are being investigated for future applications in health-care. For instance, in nursing assistance, seamless Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) is very important for sharing workspaces and workloads between medical staff, patients, and robots. In this thesis we introduce a novel robot - the Adaptive Robot Nursing Assistant (ARNA) and its underlying components. ARNA has been designed specifically to assist nurses with day-to-day tasks such as walking patients, pick-and-place item retrieval, and routine patient health monitoring. An adaptive HRI in nursing applications creates a positive user experience, increase nurse productivity and task completion rates, as reported by experimentation …

Formally Designing And Implementing Cyber Security Mechanisms In Industrial Control Networks., Mehdi Sabraoui

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation describes progress in the state-of-the-art for developing and deploying formally verified cyber security devices in industrial control networks. It begins by detailing the unique struggles that are faced in industrial control networks and why concepts and technologies developed for securing traditional networks might not be appropriate. It uses these unique struggles and examples of contemporary cyber-attacks targeting control systems to argue that progress in securing control systems is best met with formal verification of systems, their specifications, and their security properties. This dissertation then presents a development process and identifies two technologies, TLA+ and seL4, that can be …

Hardware Implementation Of Boost Power Factor Correction Converter., Shruti Motilal Deore

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Nowadays, there has been an increasing demand of unity power factor in electrical power sector. Due to the nonlinear nature of load equipment, switching devices, source voltage and current are out of phase with each other. Many power converters topologies are used for the power factor correction. The boost converter with controller is most common for power factor correction circuits. The controller objective is to maintain the output voltage regulation and input current tracking with source voltage. The voltage ripple present due to the ac component of the current tracking objective, hence instead of ignoring that ripple, it is used …

Coordinated Smart Home Thermal And Energy Management System Using A Co-Simulation Framework, Prateek Munankarmi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The increasing demand for electricity especially during the peak hours threaten the grid reliability. Demand response (DR), changing the load pattern of the consumer in response to system conditions, can decrease energy consumption during periods of high wholesale market price and also maintain system reliability. Residential homes consume 38% of the total electric energy in the U.S., making them promising for DR participation. Consumers can be motivated to participate in DR programs by providing incentives (incentive-based DR), or by introducing a time-varying tariff for electricity consumption (price-based DR). A home energy management system (HEMS), an automated system which can alter …

Energy Optimization And Coordination Frameworks For Smart Homes Considering Incentives From Discomfort And Market Analysis, Priti Paudyal

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The electricity demand is increasing with the growing use of electricity-based appliances in today’s world. The residential sector’s electricity consumption share is also increasing. Demand response (DR) is a typical way to schedule consumers’ energy consumption and help utility to reduce the peak load demand. Residential demand management can contribute to reduce peak electric demand, decrease electricity costs, and maintain grid reliability. Though the demand management has benefits to the utility and the consumers, controlling the consumers electricity consumption provides inconvenience to the consumers. The challenge here is to properly address the customers’ inconvenience to encourage them to participate and …

Machine Learning For Load Profile Data Analytics And Short-Term Load Forecasting, Md. Rashedul Haq

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Short-term load forecasting (STLF) is a key issue for the operation and dispatch of day ahead energy market. It is a prerequisite for the economic operation of power systems and the basis of dispatching and making startup-shutdown plans, which plays a key role in the automatic control of power systems. Accurate power load forecasting not only help users choose a more appropriate electricity consumption scheme and reduces a lot of electric cost expenditure but also is conducive to optimizing the resources of power systems. This advantage helps while improving equipment utilization for reducing the production cost and improving the economic …

Safe And Efficient Intelligent Intersection Control Of Autonomous Vehicles, Qiang Lu

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, we address a problem of safe and efficient intersection crossing traffic management of autonomous and connected ground traffic. Toward this objective, we propose several algorithms to handle different traffic environments. First, an algorithm that is called the Discrete-time occupancies trajectory (DTOT) based Intersection traffic Coordination Algorithm (DICA) is proposed. All vehicles in the system are Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CAVs) and capable of wireless Vehicle-to-Intersection communication. The main advantage of DICA is that it enables us to utilize the intersection space more efficiently resulting in less delay for vehicles to cross the intersection. In the proposed framework, …

Radar Detection, Tracking And Identification For Uav Sense And Avoid Applications, Erik George Moore

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Advances in Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) technology have enabled wider access for the general public leading to more stringent flight regulations, such as the "line of sight" restriction, for hobbyists and commercial applications. Improving sensor technology for Sense And Avoid (SAA) systems is currently a major research area in the unmanned vehicle community. This thesis overviews efforts made to advance intelligent algorithms used to detect, track, and identify commercial UAV targets by enabling rapid prototyping of novel radar techniques such as micro-Doppler radar target identification or cognitive radar. To enable empirical radar signal processing evaluations, an S-Band and X-Band frequency …

Nonlinear Controller Design For Uavs With Time-Varying Aerodynamic Uncertainties, Michail G. Michailidis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are here and they are here to stay. Unmanned Aviation has expanded significantly in recent years and research and development in the field of navigation and control have advanced beyond expectations. UAVs are currently being used for defense programs around the world but the range of applications is expected to grow in the near future, with civilian applications such as environmental and aerial monitoring, aerial surveillance and homeland security being some representative examples. Conventional and commercially available small-scale UAVs have limited utilization and applicability to executing specific short-duration missions because of limitations in size, payload, power …

Reinforcement Learning, Intelligent Control And Their Applications In Connected And Autonomous Vehicles, Adedapo O. Odekunle

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Reinforcement learning (RL) has attracted large attention over the past few years. Recently, we developed a data-driven algorithm to solve predictive cruise control (PCC) and games output regulation problems. This work integrates our recent contributions to the application of RL in game theory, output regulation problems, robust control, small-gain theory and PCC. The algorithm was developed for $H_\infty$ adaptive optimal output regulation of uncertain linear systems, and uncertain partially linear systems to reject disturbance and also force the output of the systems to asymptotically track a reference. In the PCC problem, we determined the reference velocity for each autonomous vehicle …

Modeling And Simulation Methodologies For Spinal Cord Stimulation., Saliya Kumara Kirigeeganage

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The use of neural prostheses to improve health of paraplegics has been a prime interest of neuroscientists over the last few decades. Scientists have performed experiments with spinal cord stimulation (SCS) to enable voluntary motor function of paralyzed patients. However, the experimentation on the human spinal cord is not a trivial task. Therefore, modeling and simulation techniques play a significant role in understanding the underlying concepts and mechanics of the spinal cord stimulation. In this work, simulation and modeling techniques related to spinal cord stimulation were investigated. The initial work was intended to visualize the electric field distribution patterns in …

Challenges In Flexible Microsystem Manufacturing : Fabrication, Robotic Assembly, Control, And Packaging., Danming Wei

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Microsystems have been investigated with renewed interest for the last three decades because of the emerging development of microelectromechanical system (MEMS) technology and the advancement of nanotechnology. The applications of microrobots and distributed sensors have the potential to revolutionize micro and nano manufacturing and have other important health applications for drug delivery and minimal invasive surgery. A class of microrobots studied in this thesis, such as the Solid Articulated Four Axis Microrobot (sAFAM) are driven by MEMS actuators, transmissions, and end-effectors realized by 3-Dimensional MEMS assembly. Another class of microrobots studied here, like those competing in the annual IEEE Mobile …

Grid-Connected Photovoltaic Systems Based On Nonlinear Control., Pablo R. Rivera

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Nowadays, due to the high-scale penetration of photovoltaic systems, reliable and efficient grid-connected photovoltaic (PV) systems utilizing the advances of power electronics and control system technology are desirable. Thus, single-stage grid-connected photovoltaic systems, have gained attention, especially in low voltage applications. However, PV systems exhibit nonlinear behavior that could negatively affect the performance of the system if they are not adequately compensated for. In this dissertation, using the general structure for the synchronous dq0 frame, a single-stage three-phase grid-connected photovoltaic system, and a single-stage single-phase grid-connected PV system, both with a nonlinear control strategy, are developed to track the maximum …

Robust Distributed Stabilization Of Interconnected Multiagent Systems, Vahid Rezaei

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Many large-scale systems can be modeled as groups of individual dynamics, e.g., multi-vehicle systems, as well as interconnected multiagent systems, power systems and biological networks as a few examples. Due to the high-dimension and complexity in configuration of these infrastructures, only a few internal variables of each agent might be measurable and the exact knowledge of the model might be unavailable for the control design purpose. The collective objectives may range from consensus to decoupling, stabilization, reference tracking, and global performance guarantees. Depending on the objectives, the designer may choose agent-level low-dimension or multiagent system-level high-dimension approaches to develop distributed …

Control Of Power Electronic Interfaces In Distributed Generation., Mohammad Mohebbi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Renewable energy has gained popularity as an alternative resource for electric power generation. As such, Distributed Generation (DG) is expected to open new horizons to electric power generation. Most renewable energy sources cannot be connected to the load directly. Integration of the renewable energy sources with the load has brought new challenges in terms of the system’s stability, voltage regulation and power quality issues. For example, the output power, voltage and frequency of an example wind turbine depend on the wind speed, which fluctuate over time and cannot be forecasted accurately. At the same time, the nonlinearity of residential electrical …

Observation And Estimation Study For Sensorless Control Of Linear Vapor Compressors., Joseph Latham

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Linear vapor compressors have become widely investigated for refrigeration applications due to their high efficiency in comparison to the more common rotary type compressors. However, the nature of the linear compressor adds complexity to the control of these machines. The unconstrained motion of the piston in a linear compressor allows for continuous modulation of the compressor output, but requires knowledge of the mechanical dynamics to effectively control the compressor and prevent collision of the piston with the cylinder head. This control is made more difficult by the highly nonlinear nature of the force of gas compression acting against the piston. …

Intelligent Learning Control System Design Based On Adaptive Dynamic Programming, Naresh Malla

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Adaptive dynamic programming (ADP) controller is a powerful neural network based control technique that has been investigated, designed, and tested in a wide range of applications for solving optimal control problems in complex systems. The performance of ADP controller is usually obtained by long training periods because the data usage efficiency is low as it discards the samples once used. Experience replay is a powerful technique showing potential to accelerate the training process of learning and control. However, its existing design can not be directly used for model-free ADP design, because it focuses on the forward temporal difference (TD) information …