This paper addresses the problem of steering a robotic vehicle along a geometric path specified with respect to a reference frame moving in three dimensions, termed the Moving Path Following (MPF) motion control problem. The MPF motion control problem is solved for a large class of robotic vehicles that require a minimum positive forward speed to operate, which poses additional constraints, and is developed using geometric concepts, wherein the attitude control problem is formulated on Special Orthogonal group SO(3). Furthermore, the proposed control law is derived from a novel MPF error model formulation that allows to exclude the conservative constraints on the initial position of the vehicle with respect to the reference path by enabling the explicit control of the progression of a virtual point moving along the reference path. The task of the MPF control law is then to steer the vehicle towards the moving path and converge to the virtual point. Formal stability and convergence guarantees are provided using the Input-to-State Stability concept. In particular, we show that the proposed controller is robust to imperfect tracking errors by the autopilot and wind gusts. Simulation results are presented to illustrate the efficacy of the proposed MPF control law.
Due to the enormous technological improvements obtained in the last decades it is possible to use robotic vehicles for underwater exploration. This work describes the development of a dynamic positioning system for remotely operated underwater vehicles based. The adopted approach is developed using Lyapunov Stability Theory and enhanced by a neural network based algorithm for uncertainty and disturbance compensation. The performance of the proposed control scheme is evaluated by means of numerical simulations.
Nonholonomic models of automobiles are developed by utilizing tools of analytical mechanics, in particular the Appellian approach that allows one to describe the vehicle dynamics with minimum number of time-dependent state variables. The models are categorized based on how they represent the wheel-ground contact, whether they incorporate the longitudinal dynamics, and whether they consider the steering dynamics. It is demonstrated that the developed models can be used to design low-complexity controllers that enable automated vehicles to execute a large variety of maneuvers with high precision…
This paper addresses the design of an optimization-based cooperative path-following control law for multiple robotic vehicles that optimally balances the transient trade-off between coordination and path-following errors. To this end, we formulate a more general multi-agent framework where each agent is associated with (i) a continuous-time dynamical model, which governs the evolution of its state, and (ii) an output equation that is a function of both the state of the agent and a coordination vector. According to a given network topology, each agent can access its state and coordination vecto…
Vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANETs) have become an extensively studied topic in contemporary research. One of the fundamental problems that has arisen in such research is understanding the network statistical properties, such as the cluster number distribution and the cluster size distribution. In this paper, we analyze these characteristics in the case in which vehicles are located on a straight road. Assuming the Rayleigh fading model and a probabilistic model of intervehicle distance, we derive probabilistic distributions of the aforementioned connectivity characteristics, as well as distrib…
Amazon（亚马逊公司）；West Virginia University（西弗吉尼亚大学）；Microsoft（微软公司）；Gather AI（Gather AI公司）；Mowito（Mowito公司）；Carnegie Mellon University（卡内基梅隆大学）
Many aerial robotic applications require the ability to land on moving platforms, such as delivery trucks and marine research boats. We present a method to autonomously land an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle on a moving vehicle. A visual servoing controller approaches the ground vehicle using velocity commands calculated directly in image space. The control laws generate velocity commands in all three dimensions, eliminating the need for a separate height controller. The method has shown the ability to approach and land on the moving deck in simulation, indoor and outdoor environments, and compared t…
Combining Moving Mass Actuators and Manoeuvring Models for Underwater Vehicles: A Lagrangian Approach
Oceanlab, Oslo Metropolitan University (OsloMet), Oslo, Norway（海洋实验室，奥斯陆 Metropolitan 大学（奥斯陆Met））；Department of Ships and Ocean Structures, SINTEF Ocean（船舶与海洋结构系，SINTEF 海洋）
Autonomous coverage of a specified area by robots operating in close proximity with each other has many potential applications such as real-time monitoring of rapidly changing environments, and search and rescue; however, coordination and safety are two fundamental challenges. For coordination, we propose a distributed controller for covering moving, compact domains for two types of vehicles with second order dynamics (double integrator and fixed-wing aircraft) with bounded input forces. This control policy is based on artificial potentials and alignment forces designed to promote desired vehi…
Safe trajectory planning for high-performance automated vehicles in an environment with both static and moving obstacles is a challenging problem. Part of the challenge is developing a formulation that can be solved in real-time while including the following set of specifications: minimum time-to-goal, a dynamic vehicle model, minimum control effort, both static and moving obstacle avoidance, simultaneous optimization of speed and steering, and a short execution horizon. This paper presents a nonlinear model predictive control-based trajectory planning formulation, tailored for a large, high-s…
University of Salento（萨伦托大学）；CNR-ISSIA（意大利国家研究委员会智能系统研究所）；IRSTEA（法国国家农业与环境研究院）；Danish Technological Institute（丹麦技术研究所）；Fraunhofer IAIS（弗劳恩霍夫智能分析与信息系统研究所）；CLAAS Agrosystems GmbH（CLAAS农业系统有限公司）
In the last few years, robotic technology has been increasingly employed in agriculture to develop intelligent vehicles that can improve productivity and competitiveness. Accurate and robust environmental perception is a critical requirement to address unsolved issues including safe interaction with field workers and animals, obstacle detection in controlled traffic applications, crop row guidance, surveying for variable rate applications, and situation awareness, in general, towards increased process automation. Given the variety of conditions thatmay be encountered in the field, no single se…
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich (ETH Zürich)（苏黎世联邦理工学院）
Flying manipulators are aerial drones with attached rigid-bodied robotic arms and belong to the latest and most actively developed research areas in robotics. The rigid nature of these arms often lack compliance, flexibility, and smoothness in movement. This work proposes to use a soft-bodied robotic arm attached to an omnidirectional micro aerial vehicle (OMAV) to leverage the compliant and flexible behavior of the arm, while remaining maneuverable and dynamic thanks to the omnidirectional drone as the floating base. The unification of the arm with the drone poses challenges in the modeling a…
In this paper, two cooperative guidance laws based on two-point boundary value are designed to deal with the problem of cooperative encirclement and simultaneous attack under condition of both known target acceleration and unknown target acceleration. The only requirement for the multi-attacker communication network is that it contains a directed spanning tree. The guidance laws can function properly as long as at least one attacker can observed the target. The acceleration components along the attacker-target line of sight in the novel guidance laws can reduce the relative remaining distance …
Networked robotic systems, such as connected vehicle platoons, can improve the safety and efficiency of transportation networks by allowing for high-speed coordination. To enable such coordination, these systems rely on networked communications. This can make them susceptible to cyber attacks. Though security methods such as encryption or specially designed network topologies can increase the difficulty of successfully executing such an attack, these techniques are unable to guarantee secure communication against an attacker. More troublingly, these security methods are unable to ensure that i…
MAT-Fly: An Educational Platform for Simulating Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Aimed to Detect and Track Moving Objects
Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Czech Technical University in Prague（布拉格捷克技术大学电气工程系）；Department of Engineering, University of Sannio in Benevento, Piazza Roma 21（巴内维诺萨恩尼奥大学工程系，罗马广场21号）
The rapid escalation in plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) and their uncoordinated charging patterns pose several challenges in distribution system operation. Some of the undesirable effects include overloading of transformers, rapid voltage fluctuations, and over/under voltages. While this compromises the consumer power quality, it also puts on extra stress on the local voltage control devices. These challenges demand for a well-coordinated and power network-aware charging approach for PEVs in a community. This paper formulates a real-time electric vehicle charging scheduling problem as an mixe…
