La thématique étudiée dans ce mémoire est axée sur la préservation de la stabilité dynamique de véhicules évoluant en environnement naturel. En effet, la mobilité en milieu tout-terrain est une activité particulièrement pénible et dangereuse en raison de la nature difficile de l'environnement de conduite et de la reconfigurabilité des machines. Le caractère changeant et incertain des interactions rencontrées entre des véhicules à dynamique complexe et variable et leur environnement entraîne régulièrement des risques accrus de renversement et/ou de perte de contrôle (dévalement, dérapage déclenché par une perte soudaine d'adhérence) pour le conducteur. Une forte accidentalité mortelle est, en effet, recensée dans ce secteur, en particulier, dans le milieu agricole ou le renversement de véhicule est classé comme étant la première cause de mortalité au travail. A l'heure actuelle, les approches existantes sur la stabilité d'engins agricoles sont qualifiées à juste titre de passives car elles ne permettent pas d'éviter que les accidents ne se produisent. Par ailleurs, la transposition directe des solutions de sécurité active du secteur de l'automobile (ABS, ESP) s'est révélée inadaptée aux véhicules tout-terrain a cause des hypothèses simplificatrices (routes plates et homogènes, conditions d'adhérence constantes, etc.) dont souffre la conception de ces dispositifs. Ainsi, le développement de systèmes actifs de sécurité prenant en compte les spécificités de la conduite en milieu tout-terrain se révèle être la meilleure voie d'amélioration à suivre. Eu égard à ces circonstances, ce projet se propose d'adresser cette problématique en étudiant des métriques de stabilité pertinentes permettant d'estimer et d'anticiper en temps réel les risques afin de permettre des actions correctives pour la préservation de l'intégrité des machines tout-terrain. Afin de faciliter l'industrialisation du dispositif actif de sécurité conçu, l'une des contraintes sociétales et commerciales de ce projet a été l'utilisation de capteurs compatibles avec le coût des machines visées. L'objectif ambitieux de cette étude a été atteint par différentes voies. En premier lieu, une approche de modélisation multi-échelle a permis de caractériser l'évolution dynamique de véhicules en milieu tout-terrain. Cette approche à dynamique partielle a offert l'avantage de développer des modèles suffisamment précis pour être représentatifs du comportement réel de l'engin mais tout en présentant une structure relativement simple permettant la synthèse d'asservissements performants. Puis, une étude comparative des avantages et des inconvénients des trois grandes familles de métriques répertoriées dans la littérature a permis de mettre en exergue l'intérêt des métriques analytiques à modèle dynamique par rapport aux catégories de critères de stabilité dits statiques et empiriques. Enfin, l'analyse approfondie des métriques dynamiques a facilité le choix de trois indicateurs (Lateral and Longitudinal Load Transfer (LLT), Force Angle Stability Measurement (FASM) et Dynamic Energy Stability Measurement (DESM)) qui sont représentatifs d'un risque imminent de renversement du véhicule. La suite du mémoire s'appuie sur la théorie d'observation pour l'estimation en ligne des variables non directement mesurables en milieu tout-terrain telles que les rigidités de glissement et dérive du pneumatique. Jumelée aux différents modèles dynamiques du véhicule, la synthèse d'observateurs a permis donc d'estimer en temps réel les efforts d'interaction pneumatiques-sol nécessaires à l'évaluation des indicateurs d'instabilité. Le couplage de ces modèles multi-échelles à la théorie d'observation a ainsi constitué un positionnement original à même de briser la complexité de la caractérisation de la stabilité de véhicules à dynamiques complexes et incertaines. (...) / This work is focused on the thematic of the maintenance of the dynamic stability of off-road vehicles. Indeed, driving vehicles in off-road environment remains a dangerous and harsh activity because of the variable and bad grip conditions associated to a large diversity of terrains. Driving difficulties may be also encountered when considering huge machines with possible reconfiguration of their mechanical properties (changes in mass and centre of gravity height for instance). As a consequence, for the sole agriculture sector, several fatal injuries are reported per year in particular due to rollover situations. Passive protections (ROllover Protective Structure - ROPS) are installed on tractors to reduce accident consequences. However, protection capabilities of these structures are very limited and the latter cannot be embedded on bigger machines due to mechanical design limitations. Furthermore, driving assistance systems (such as ESP or ABS) have been deeply studied for on-road vehicles and successfully improve safety. These systems usually assume that the vehicle Center of Gravity (CG) height is low and that the vehicles are operating on smooth and level terrain. Since these assumptions are not satisfied when considering off-road vehicles with a high CG, such devices cannot be applied directly. Consequently, this work proposes to address this research problem by studying relevant stability metrics able to evaluate in real time the rollover risk in order to develop active safety devices dedicated to off-road vehicles. In order to keep a feasible industrialization of the conceived active safety device, the use of compatible sensors with the cost of the machines was one of the major commercial and societal requirements of the project. The ambitious goal of this study was achieved by different routes. First, a multi-scale modeling approach allowed to characterize the dynamic evolution of off-road vehicles. This partial dynamic approach has offered the advantage of developing sufficiently accurate models to be representative of the actual behavior of the machine but having a relatively simple structure for high-performance control systems. Then, a comparative study of the advantages and drawbacks of the three main families of metrics found in the literature has helped to highlight the interest of dynamic stability metrics at the expense to categories of so-called static and empirical stability criteria. Finally, a thorough analysis of dynamic metrics has facilitated the choice of three indicators (Longitudinal and Lateral Load Transfer (LLT), Force Angle Stability Measurement (FASM) and Dynamic Energy Stability Measurement (DESM)) that are representative of an imminent rollover risk. The following of the document is based on the observation theory for estimating online of variables which are not directly measurable in off-road environment such as slip and cornering stiffnesses. Coupled to the dynamic models of the vehicle, the theory of observers has helped therefore to estimate in real time the tire-soil interaction forces which are necessaries for evaluating indicators of instability. The coupling of these multiscale models to the observation theory has formed an original positioning capable to break the complexity of the characterization of the stability of vehicles having complex and uncertain dynamics. (...)

This dissertation addresses novel techniques in determining gyroless micro-satellite attitude and attitude rate. The main objective of this thesis is to explore the possibility of using commercially available low cost micro-light star sensor as a stand-alone sensor for micro-satellite attitude as well as attitude rate determination. The objective is achieved by developing accurate and computationally efficient algorithms for the realization of onboard operation of a low fidelity star sensor. All the algorithms developed here are tested with the measurement noise presented in the catalog of the sensor array STAR-1000. A novel accurate second order sliding mode observer (SOSMO) is designed for discrete time uncertain linear multi-output system. Our design procedure is effective for both matched and unmatched bounded uncertain ties and/or disturbances. The bound on uncertainties and/or disturbances is assumed to be unknown. This problem is addressed in this work using the second order multiple sliding modes approach. Second order sliding manifold and corresponding sliding condition for discrete time system is defined similar on the lines of continuous counterpart. Our design is not restricted to a particular class of uncertain (matched) discrete time system. Moreover, it can handle multiple outputs unlike single out-put systems. The observer design is achieved by driving the state observation error and its first order finite difference to the vicinity of the equilibrium point (0,0) in a finite steps and maintaining them in the neighborhood thereafter. The estimation synthesis is based on Quasi Sliding Mode (QSM) design. The problem of designing sliding mode observer for a linear system subjected to unknown inputs requires observer matching condition. This condition is needed to ensure that the state estimation error is a asymptotically stable and is independent of the unknown input during the sliding motion. In the absence of a matching condition, asymptotic stability of the reduced order error dynamics on the sliding surface is not guaranteed. However, unknown bounded inputs guarantee bounded error on state estimation. The QSM design guarantees an ultimate error bound by incorporating Boundary Layer (BL) in its design procedure. The observer achieves one order of magnitude improvement in estimation accuracy than the conventional sliding mode observer (SMO) design for an unknown input. The observer estimation errors, satisfying the given stability conditions, converge to an ultimate finite bound (with in the specified BL) of O(T2), where T Is the sampling period. A relation between sliding mode gain and boundary layer is established for the existence of second order discrete sliding motion. The robustness of the proposed observer with respect to measurement noise is also analyzed. The design algorithm is very simple to apply and is implemented for two examples with different classes of disturbances (matched and unmatched) to show the effectiveness of the design. Simulation results show the robustness with respect to the measurement noise for SOSMO. Second order sliding mode observer gain can be calculated off-line and the same gain can work for large band of disturbance as long as the disturbance acting on the continuous time system is bounded and smooth. The SOSMO is simpler to implement on board compared to the other traditional nonlinear filters like Pseudo-Linear-Kalman-filter(PLKF); Extended Kalman Filter(EKF). Moreover, SMO possesses an automatic adaptation property same as optimal state estimator(like Kalman filter) with respect to the intensity of the measurement noise. The SMO rejects the noisy measurements automatically, in response to the increased noise intensity. The dynamic performance of the observer on the sliding surface can be altered and no knowledge of noise statistics is required. It is shown that the SOSMO performs more accurately than the PLKF in application to micro-satellite angular rate estimation since PLKF is not an optimal filter. A new method for estimation of satellite angular rates through derivative approach is proposed. The method is based on optic flow of star image patterns formed on a star sensor. The satellite angular rates are derived directly from the 2D-coordinates of star images. Our algorithm is computationally efficient and requires less memory allocation compared to the existing vector derivative approaches, where there is also no need for star identification. The angular rates are computed using least square solution method, based on the measurement equation obtained by optic flow of star images. These estimates are then fed into discrete time second order sliding mode observer (SOSMO). The performance of angular rate estimation by SOSMO is compared with the discrete time First order SMO and PLKF. The SOSMO gives the best estimates as compared to the other two schemes in estimating micro-satellite angular rates in all three axes. The improvement in accuracy is one order of magnitude (around1.7984 x 10−5 rad/ sec,8.9987 x 10−6 rad/ sec and1.4222 x 10−5 rad/ sec in three body axes respectively) in terms of standard deviation in steady state estimation error. A new method and algorithm is presented to determine star camera parameters along with satellite attitude with high precision even if these parameters change during long on-orbit operation. Star camera parameters and attitude need to be determined independent of each other as they both can change. An efficient, closed form solution method is developed to estimate star camera parameters (like focal length, principal point offset), lens distortions (like radial distortion) and attitude. The method is based on a two step procedure. In the first step, all parameters (except lens distortion) are estimated using a distortion free camera model. In the second step, lens distortion coefficient is estimated by linear least squares (LS) method. Here the derived camera parameters in first step are used in the camera model that incorporates distortion. However, this method requires identification of observed stars with the catalogue stars. But, on-orbit star identification is difficult as it utilizes the values of camera calibrating parameters that can change in orbit(detector and optical element alignment get change in orbit due to solar pressure or sudden temperature change) from the ground calibrated value. This difficulty is overcome by employing a camera self-calibration technique which only requires four observed stars in three consecutive image frames. Star camera parameters along with lens (radial and decentering) distortion coefficients are determined by camera self calibration technique. Finally Kalman filter is used to refine the estimated data obtained from the LS based method to improve the level of accuracy. We consider the true values of camera parameters as (u0,v0) = (512.75,511.25) pixel, f = 50.5mm; The ground calibrated values of those parameters are (u0,v0) =( 512,512) pixel, f = 50mm; Worst case radial distortion coefficient affecting the star camera lens is considered to be k1 =5 x 10−3 .Our proposed method of attitude determination achieves accuracy of the order of magnitude around 6.2288 x 10−5 rad,3.3712 x 10−5 radand5.8205 x 10−5 rad in attitude angles φ,θ and ψ. Attitude estimation by existing methods in the literature diverges from the true value since they utilize the ground calibrated values of camera parameters instead of true values. To summarize, we developed a formal theory of discrete time Second Order Sliding Mode Observer for uncertain multi-output system. Our methods achieve the desired accuracy while estimating satellite attitude and attitude rate using low fidelity star sensor data. Our methods require lower on-board processing requirement and less memory allocation; thus are suitable for micro-satellite applications. Thus, the objective of using low fidelity star sensor as stand-alone sensor in micro-satellite application is achieved.

Rýchlosť vozidla je jednou z kľúčových stavových premenných, ktorej znalosť je potrebná v reálnom čase a s vysokou presnosťou, aby mohla slúžiť ako vstupná veličina pre systémy kontroly dynamiky vozidla. Jej priame meranie vo vozidle je však finančne náročné. Riešením tohoto problému môže byť použitie meraní zo senzorov bežne dostupných na palube vozidla a ich následný prepočet na rýchlosť vozidla. Tieto merania sú však veľmi zaťažené procesným šumom, čo vyplýva z komplexnosti pohybu vozidla. Preto je nutné vyvinúť algoritmus so schopnosťou vysporiadať sa s týmito negatívnymi vplyvmi. Algoritmus prezentovaný v tejto práci odhaduje pozdĺžnu rýchlosť vozidla s použitím meraní uhlových rýchlostí štyroch kolies, pozdĺžnej akcelerácie, momentov motora, rýchlosti otáčania okolo zvislej osi a natočenia volantu. Algoritmus bol testovaný na veľkom počte situácií považovaných za kritické na odhad rýchlosti vozidla, ako napríklad prudká akcelerácia na vozovke s nízkym koeficientom trenia, núdzové brzdenie s aktiváciou ABS, či jazda v kopci s kolesami v preklze, prinášajúc uspokojujúce výsledky.

Cette thèse étudie le problème de nano-positionnement à l'intérieur d'un microscope électronique à balayage (MEB). Pour obtenir des informations de position avec rapidité et précision, une installation dédiée composée d’un vibromètre placé à l'intérieur du MEB a été mise en œuvre. Cette approche diffère de méthodes basées sur le traitement d'images, car elle permet de saisir des données en temps réel sur le comportement dynamique des structures étudiées. Dans une première étude, les perturbations mécaniques agissant à l'intérieur de la chambre à vide du microscope ont été caractérisées et leurs sources ont été identifiées. Cela a démontré comment les vibrations mécaniques externes et les bruits acoustiques peuvent influer largement sur les composants à l'intérieur du MEB par couplage mécanique, limitant ainsi la précision des manipulateurs. Dans un deuxième temps, une micro-pince du commerce a été étudiée. Une différence entre ses comportements dans l'air et dans le vide a été mise en évidence, ce qui a permis d'obtenir deux modèles dynamiques pour cet organe terminal, un pour chaque environnement. Deux lois de commande ont été proposées (commande H-infini et commande basée sur un observateur d'état étendu), afin d'obtenir en temps réel un positionnement précis dans le vide, et d'atténuer les effets des perturbations mécaniques externes. Les résultats ont été validés en simulation et expérimentalement. / This work studies the nano-positioning problem inside the scanning electron microscope (SEM). To acquire fast and accurate positional information, a dedicated setup was implemented consisting of a vibrometer placed inside the SEM. This approach differs from methods based on image processing, as it allows to capture real-time data on the dynamic behavior of structures. In a first study, the mechanical disturbances acting inside the microscope’s vacuum chamber were characterized and its sources were identified. This demonstrated how external mechanical vibrations and acoustic noises can largely influence the components inside the SEM through mechanical coupling, limiting the effective positioning precision of manipulators. Next, a commercial micro-gripper was studied, both in air and in vacuum, and the differences between its response were highlighted. This allowed to obtain two dynamic models for this end-effector, one for each environment. Two control laws were proposed (H-infinity control and Extended State Observer based control) for the system, to obtain a real-time, precise positioning in the vacuum environment and to attenuate the effects of the external mechanical disturbances. Results were demonstrated through simulation and experimental validation.

L’analyse et la synthèse des systèmes dynamiques ont connu un développement important au cours des dernières décennies comme l’atteste le nombre considérable des travaux publiés dans ce domaine, et continuent d’être un axe de recherche régulièrement exploré. Si la plupart des travaux concernent les systèmes linéaires et non linéaires temps continu, peu de résultats ont étaient établis dans le cas temps discret. Les travaux de cette thèse portent sur l’observation et la commande d’une classe de systèmes non linéaires à temps discret. Dans un premier temps, le problème de synthèse d’observateur d’état utilisant une fenêtre de mesures glissante est abordé. Des conditions de stabilité et de robustesse moins restrictives sont déduites. Deux classes de systèmes non linéaires à temps discret sont étudiées : les systèmes de type Lipschitz et les systèmes « one-sided Lipschitz ». Ensuite, une approche duale a été explorée afin de déduire une loi de commande stabilisante basée sur un observateur. Les conditions d’existence d’un observateur et d’un contrôleur stabilisant les systèmes étudiés sont formulées sous forme d’un problème d’optimisation LMI. L’efficacité et la validité des approches présentées sont montrées à travers des exemples académiques / The analysis and synthesis of dynamic systems has undergone significant development in recent decades, as illustrated by the considerable number of published works in this field, and continue to be a research theme regularly explored. While most of the existing work concerns linear and nonlinear continuous-time systems, few results have been established in the discrete-time case. This thesis deals with the observation and control of a class of nonlinear discrete-time systems. First, the problem of state observer synthesis using a sliding window of measurements is discussed. Non-restrictive stability and robustness conditions are deduced. Two classes of discrete time nonlinear systems are studied: Lipschitz systems and one-side Lipschitz systems. Then, a dual approach was explored to derive a stabilizing control law based on observer-based state feedback. The conditions for the existence of an observer and a controller stabilizing the studied classes of nonlinear systems are expressed in term of LMI. The effectiveness and validity of the proposed approaches are shown through numerical examples

Le travail présenté dans la thèse s’inscrit dans le projet de recherche partenarial ANR-ABV 2009 dont l’objet est la conception d’un système de conduite automatisée à basse vitesse. Il décrit et analyse les principes d’un contrôle partagé d’un véhicule automobile entre un conducteur humain et un copilote électronique (E-copilote). L’objectif est de mettre en place une coopération Homme-Machine efficace entre le conducteur et l’E-copilote. Un des enjeux est notamment de permettre au conducteur d’interagir avec l’E-copilote de façon continue pour pouvoir exécuter les manœuvres qu’il souhaite sans nécessiter la désactivation ni être gêné par l’E-copilote. Cet enjeu répond au besoin de prise en compte des actions du conducteur entreprises pour pallier celles du E-copilote dans certaines situations par exemple éviter un obstacle non perçu par le système. L’objectif dans ce cas est de garantir le confort au conducteur ainsi que sa conscience du mode engagé (système actif ou pas). Le conducteur et l’E-copilote agissant simultanément sur le système de direction, chacun doit être conscient des actions de l’autre : une communication bidirectionnelle est essentielle. Pour atteindre cet objectif, nous avons retenu les interactions haptiques à travers le système de direction du véhicule. Le couple appliqué par le conducteur sur volant est utilisé par l’E-copilote pour prendre en compte ces actions de la même façon que le couple produit par l’E-copilote est ressenti par le conducteur et utilisé pour comprendre le comportement du système. D’autres aspects essentiels pour la coopération H-M ont également été abordés : l’´étude des changements de modes de fonctionnement du système ainsi que l’IHM via laquelle le conducteur interagit avec le système. / The work presented in the thesis is part of the research partnership project ANRABV 2009 which aims is to design an automated low-speed driving. It describes and analyzes the principles of shared control of a motor vehicle between a human driver and an electronic copilot (E-copilot). The objective is to establish effective human-machine cooperation between the driver and E-copilot. One issue is particular to allow the driver to interact with the E-copilot continuously in order to perform maneuvers he wants without requiring deactivation neither constrained by E-copilot. This issue addresses the need for consideration of driver actions taken to remedy those of E-copilot for example avoiding undetected obstacle by the system while ensuring operator comfort and the driver situation awareness. The driver and E-co-pilot acting simultaneously on the steering system, everyone must be aware of the actions of the other: twoway communication is essential. To achieve this goal, we used the haptic interactions through the steering system of the vehicle. The torque applied by the driver on the steering wheel is used by the E-copilot to take into account these actions as the torque produced by the E-copilot is felt by the driver and used to understand the system’s behavior. Other key issues for the Human-Machine Cooperation were also discussed: the study of changes in modes of operation of the system and HMI via which the driver interact with the system.

Beaucoup de services vitaux de la vie quotidienne dépendent de systèmes d'ingénierie hautement complexes et interconnectés; Ces systèmes sont constitués d'un grand nombre de capteurs interconnectés, d'actionneurs et de composants du système. L'étude des systèmes interconnectés joue un rôle important dans l'étude de la fiabilité des systèmes dynamiques; car elle permet d'étudier les propriétés d'un système interconnecté en analysant ses sous-composants moins complexes. Le diagnostic des pannes est essentiel pour assurer des opérations sûres et fiables des systèmes de contrôle interconnectés. Dans toutes les situations, le système global et / ou chaque sous-système peuvent être analysés à différents niveaux pour déterminer la fiabilité du système global. Dans certains cas, il est important de déterminer les informations anormales des variables internes du sous-système local, car ce sont les causes qui contribuent au fonctionnement anormal du processus global. Cette thèse porte sur les défis de l'application de la théorie inverse du système et des techniques FDD basées sur des modèles pour traiter le problème articulaire du diagnostic des fautes et de l'analyse des causes racines (FD et RCA). Nous étudions ensuite le problème de l'inversibilité de la gauche, de l'observabilité et de la diagnosticabilité des fauts du système interconnecté, formant un algorithme FD et RCA multi-niveaux basé sur un modèle. Ce système de diagnostic permet aux composants individuels de surveiller la dynamique interne localement afin d'améliorer l'efficacité du système et de diagnostiquer des ressources de fautes potentielles pour localiser un dysfonctionnement lorsque les performances du système global se dégradent. Par conséquent, un moyen d'une combinaison d'intelligence locale avec une capacité de diagnostic plus avancée pour effectuer des fonctions FDD à différents niveaux du système est fourni. En conséquence, on peut s'attendre à une amélioration de la localisation des fauts et à de meilleurs moyens de maintenance prédictive. La nouvelle structure du système, ainsi que l'algorithme de diagnostic des fautes, met l'accent sur l'importance de la RCA de défaut des dispositifs de terrain, ainsi que sur l'influence de la dynamique interne locale sur la dynamique globale. Les contributions de cette thèse sont les suivantes: Tout d'abord, nous proposons une structure de système non linéaire interconnecté inversible qui garantit le fauts dans le sous-système de périphérique de terrain affecte la sortie mesurée du système global de manière unique et distincte. Une condition nécessaire et suffisante est développée pour assurer l'inversibilité du système interconnecté qui nécessite l'inversibilité de sous-systèmes individuels. Deuxièmement, un observateur interconnecté à deux niveaux est développé; Il se compose de deux estimateurs d'état, vise à fournir des estimations précises des états de chaque sous-système, ainsi que l'interconnexion inconnue. En outre, il fournira également une condition initiale pour le reconstructeur de données et le filtre de fauts local une fois que la procédure FD et RCA est déclenchée par tout fauts. D'une part, la mesure utilisée dans l'estimateur de l'ancien sous-système est supposée non accessible; La solution est de la remplacer par l'estimation fournie par l'estimateur de ce dernier sous-système. / Many of the vital services of everyday life depend on highly complex and interconnected engineering systems; these systems consist of large number of interconnected sensors, actuators and system components. The study of interconnected systems plays a significant role in the study of reliability theory of dynamic systems, as it allows one to investigate the properties of an interconnected system by analyzing its less complicated subcomponents. Fault diagnosis is crucial in achieving safe and reliable operations of interconnected control systems. In all situations, the global system and/or each subsystem can be analyzed at different levels in investigating the reliability of the overall system; where different levels mean from system level down to the subcomponent level. In some cases, it is important to determine the abnormal information of the internal variables of local subsystem, in order to isolate the causes that contribute to the anomalous operation of the overall process. For example, if a certain fault appears in an actuator, the origin of that malfunction can have different causes: zero deviation, leakage, clogging etc. These origins can be represented as root cause of an actuator fault. This thesis concerns with the challenges of applying system inverse theory and model based FDD techniques to handle the joint problem of fault diagnosis & root cause analysis (FD & RCA) locally and performance monitoring globally. By considering actuator as individual dynamic subsystem connected with process dynamic subsystem in cascade, we propose an interconnected nonlinear system structure. We then investigate the problem of left invertibility, fault observability and fault diagnosability of the interconnected system, forming a novel model based multilevel FD & RCA algorithm. This diagnostic algorithm enables individual component to monitor internal dynamics locally to improve plant efficiency and diagnose potential fault resources to locate malfunction when operation performance of global system degrades. Hence, a means of acombination of local intelligence with a more advanceddiagnostic capability (combining fault monitoring anddiagnosis at both local and global levels) to performFDDfunctions on different levels of the plantis provided. As a result, improved fault localization and better predictive maintenance aids can be expected. The new system structure, together with the fault diagnosis algorithm, is the first to emphasize the importance of fault RCA of field devices, as well as the influences of local internal dynamics on the global dynamics. The developed model based multi-level FD & RCA algorithm is then a first effort to combine the strength of the system level model based fault diagnosis with the component level model based fault diagnosis. The contributions of this thesis include the following: Firstly, we propose a left invertible interconnected nonlinear system structure which guarantees that fault occurred in field device subsystem will affect the measured output of the global system uniquely and distinguishably. A necessary and sufficient condition is developed to ensure invertibility of the interconnected system which requires invertibility of individual subsystems. Second, a two level interconnected observer is developed which consists of two state estimators, aims at providing accurately estimates of states of each subsystem, as well as the unknown interconnection. In addition, it will also provide initial condition for the input reconstructor and local fault filter once FD & RCA procedure is triggered by any fault. Two underlyingissues are worth to be highlighted: for one hand, the measurement used in the estimator of the former subsystem is assumed not accessible; the solution is to replace it by the estimate provided by the estimator of the latter subsystem. In fact, this unknown output is the unknown interconnection of the interconnected system, and also the input of the latter subsystem.

The main body of this thesis consists of four appended papers. The first two consider different aspects of the trajectory planning problem, while the last two deal with observer design for mobile robotic and Euler-Lagrange systems respectively. The first paper addresses the problem of designing a real time, high performance trajectory planner for aerial vehicles. The main contribution is two-fold. Firstly, by augmenting a novel safety maneuver at the end of the planned trajectory, this paper extends previous results by having provable safety properties in a 3D setting. Secondly, assuming initial feasibility, the planning method is shown to have finite time task completion. Moreover, in the second part of the paper, the problem of simultaneous arrival of multiple aerial vehicles is considered. By using a time-scale separation principle, one is able to adopt standard Laplacian control to this consensus problem, which is neither unconstrained, nor first order. Direct methods for trajectory optimization are traditionally based on a priori temporal discretization and collocation methods. In the second paper, the problem of adaptive node distribution is formulated as a constrained optimization problem, which is to be included in the underlying nonlinear mathematical programming problem. The benefits of utilizing the suggested method for online trajectory optimization are illustrated by a missile guidance example. In the third paper, the problem of active observer design for an important class of non-uniformly observable systems, namely mobile robotics systems, is considered. The set of feasible configurations and the set of output flow equivalent states are defined. It is shown that the inter-relation between these two sets may serve as the basis for design of active observers. The proposed observer design methodology is illustrated by considering a unicycle robot model, equipped with a set of range-measuring sensors. Finally, in the fourth paper, a geometrically intrinsic observer for Euler-Lagrange systems is defined and analyzed. This observer is a generalization of the observer recently proposed by Aghannan and Rouchon. Their contractivity result is reproduced and complemented by a proof that the region of contraction is infinitely thin. However, assuming a priori bounds on the velocities, convergence of the observer is shown by means of Lyapunov's direct method in the case of configuration manifolds with constant curvature. / QC 20101108

Recently, a lot of research work has been dedicated toward enhancing performance, reliability and integrity of distributed energy resources that are integrated into distribution networks. The problem of islanding detection and islanding prevention (i.e. anti-islanding) has stimulated a lot of research due to its role in severely compromising the safety of working personnel and resulting in equipment damages. Various Islanding Detection Methods (IDMs) have been developed within the last ten years in anticipation of the tremendous increase in the penetration of Distributed Generation (DG) in distribution system. This work proposes new IDMs that rely on transient and distributed behaviors to improve integrity and performance of DGs while maintaining multi-DG islanding detection capability. In this thesis, the following questions have been addressed: How to utilize the transient behavior arising from an islanding condition to improve detectability and robust performance of IDMs in a distributive manner? How to reduce the negative stability impact of the well-known Sandia Frequency Shift (SFS) IDM while maintaining its islanding detection capability? How to incorporate the perturbations provided by each of DGs in such a way that the negative interference of different IDMs is minimized without the need of any type of communication among the different DGs? It is shown that the proposed techniques are local, scalable and robust against different loading conditions and topology changes. Also, the proposed techniques can successfully distinguish an islanding condition from other disturbances that may occur in power system networks. This work improves the efficiency, reliability and safety of integrated DGs, which presents a necessary advance toward making electric power grids a smart grid.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / In the early 1950s, President Dwight Eisenhower encouraged citizens to “Wake Up! Sign Up! Look Up!” to the Soviet atomic threat by joining the Ground Observer Corps (GOC). Established by the United States Air Force (USAF), the GOC involved civilian volunteers surveying the skies for Soviet aircraft via watchtowers, alerting the Air Force if they suspected threatening aircraft. This thesis examines the 1950s response to the longstanding problem posed by the invention of any new weapon: how to adapt defensive technology to meet the potential threat. In the case of the early Cold War period, the GOC was the USAF’s best, albeit faulty, defense option against a weapon that did not discriminate between soldiers and citizens and rendered traditional ground troops useless. After the Korean War, Air Force officials promoted the GOC for its espousal of volunteerism and individualism. Encouraged to take ownership of the program, observers appropriated the GOC for their personal and community needs, comprised of social gatherings and policing activities, thus greatly expanding the USAF’s original objectives.