This thesis aims at investigating numerical methods through which the accuracy in landing of a Mars entry-descent-landing (EDL) vehicle can be improved. The methods investigated include the collocation method and model predictive control (MPC). The primary control variable utilized in this study is the bank angle of the spacecraft, which is the angle between the lift vector and the vertical direction. Modulating this vector affects the equations of system of equations and the seven state variables, namely altitude, velocity, latitude, longitude, flight path angle, heading angle and total time taken. An optimizer is implemented which utilizes the collocation method, through which the optimal bank angle is found at every discretized state along the trajectory which are equally separated through a definite timestep, which is a function of the end time state. A 3-sigma wind disturbance model is introduced to the system, as a function of the altitude, which introduces uncertainties to the system, resulting in a final state deviating from the targeted location. The trajectory is split into two parts, for better control of the vehicle during the end stages of flight. The MPC aims at reducing the end state deviation, through the implementation of a predictor-corrector algorithm that propagates the trajectory for a certain number of timesteps, followed by running the optimizer from the current disturbed state to the desired target location. At the end of this analysis, a new set of optimal bank angle are found, which account for the wind disturbances and navigates the EDL vehicle to the desired location. / M.S. / Landing on Mars has always been a process of following a set of predetermined instructions by the spacecraft, in order to reach a calculated landing target. This work aims to take the first steps towards autonomy in maneuvering the spacecraft, and finding a method by which the vehicle navigates itself towards the target. This work determines the optimal control scheme a Mars reentry vehicle must have through the atmosphere to reach the target location, and employs method through which the uncertainty in the final landing location is mitigated. A model predictive controller is employed which corrects the disturbed trajectory of the vehicle at certain timesteps, through which the previously calculated optimal control is changed so as to account for the disturbances. The control is achieved by means of changing the bank angle of the spacecraft, which in turn affects the lift and drag experienced by the vehicle. Through this work, a method has been demonstrated which reduces the uncertainty in final landing location, even with wind disturbances present.

The Hybrid Electric Vehicle Team (HEVT) of Virginia Tech is partaking in the 4-Year EcoCar Mobility Challenge organized by Argonne National Labs. The objective of this competition is to modify a stock 2019 traditional internal combustion engine Chevrolet Blazer and to transform the vehicle into a P4 hybrid. Due to the P4 Hybrid architecture, the HEVT vehicle has an internal combustion engine on the front axle and an electric motor on the rear axle. The goal of this competition is to create a vehicle that achieves better fuel economy and increases customer appeal. The general target market of hybrids is smaller vehicles. As a midsize sport utility vehicle (SUV), the Blazer offers a larger vehicle with the perk of better fuel economy. In the competition, the vehicle is assessed on the ability to integrate advanced vehicle technology, improve consumer appeal, and provide comfort for the passenger. The research of this paper is centered around the design of a full range longitudinal Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) algorithm. Initially, research is conducted on various linear and nonlinear control strategies that provide the necessary functionality. Based on the ability to predict future time instances in an optimal method, the Model Predictive Control (MPC) algorithm is chosen and combined with other standard control strategies to create an ACC system. The main objective of this research is the implementation of Adaptive Cruise Control features that provide comfort and energy savings to the rider while maintaining safety as the priority. Rider comfort is achieved by placing constraints on acceleration and jerk. Lastly, a proper energy analysis is conducted to showcase the potential energy savings with the implementation of the Adaptive Cruise Control system. This implementation includes tuning the algorithm so that the best energy consumption at the wheel is achieved without compromising vehicle safety. The scope of this paper expands on current knowledge of Adaptive Cruise Control by using a simplified nonlinear vehicle system model in MATLAB to simulate different conditions. For each condition, comfort and energy consumption are analyzed. The city 505 simulation of a traditional ACC system show a 14% or 42 Wh/mi reduction in energy at the wheel. The city 505 simulation of the environmentally friendly ACC system show a 29% or 88 Wh/mi reduction in energy at the wheel. Furthermore, these simulations confirm that maximum acceleration and jerk are bounded. Specifically, peak jerk is reduced by 90% or 8 m/s3 during a jerky US06 drive cycle. The main objective of this analysis is to demonstrate that with proper implementation, this ACC system effectively reduces tractive energy consumption while improving rider comfort for any vehicle. / Master of Science / The Hybrid Electric Vehicle Team (HEVT) of Virginia Tech is partaking in the 4-Year EcoCar Mobility Challenge organized by Argonne National Labs. The objective of this competition is to modify a stock 2019 Chevrolet Blazer into a hybrid. This modification is accomplished by creating a vehicle that burns less gasoline and increases customer appeal. The general target market of hybrids is smaller vehicles. As a midsize sport utility vehicle (SUV), the Blazer offers a larger vehicle with the perk of better fuel economy. In the competition, the vehicle is assessed on the ability to integrate advanced technology, improve consumer appeal, and provide comfort for the passenger. The research of this paper is centered around the design of Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC). Initially, research is conducted on various control strategies that provide the necessary functionality. A controller that predicts future events is selected for the Adaptive Cruise Control. The main objective of this research is the implementation of Adaptive Cruise Control features that provide comfort and energy consumption savings to the rider while maintaining safety as the priority. Rider comfort is achieved by creating a smoother ride. Lastly, a proper energy analysis showcases the potential energy savings with the implementation of the Adaptive Cruise Control system. The scope of this paper expands on current knowledge of Adaptive Cruise Control by using a simplified vehicle model to simulate different conditions. The city simulations of a traditional ACC system show a 14% reduction in energy at the wheel. City simulations of the environmentally friendly Adaptive Cruise Controller show a 29% reduction in energy. Both of these simulations allow for comfortable ride. Specifically, maximum car jerk is reduced by 90%. The main objective of this analysis is to demonstrate that with proper implementation, this ACC system effectively reduces energy consumption at the wheel while improving rider comfort.

We present a motion control framework which allows a group of robots to work together to decide upon their motions by minimizing a collective cost without any central computing component or any one agent performing a large portion of the computation. When developing distributed control algorithms, care must be taken to respect the limited computational capacity of each agent as well as respect the information and communication constraints of the network. To address these issues, we develop a distributed, behavior-based model predictive control (MPC) framework which alleviates the computational difficulties present in many distributed MPC frameworks, while respecting the communication and information constraints of the network. In developing the multi-agent control framework, we make three contributions. First, we develop a distributed optimization technique which respects the dynamic communication restraints of the network, converges to a collective minimum of the cost, and has transients suitable for robot motion control. Second, we develop a behavior-based MPC framework to control the motion of a single-agent and apply the framework to robot navigation. The third contribution is to combine the concepts of distributed optimization and behavior-based MPC to develop the mentioned multi-agent behavior-based MPC algorithm suitable for multi-robot motion control.

Networked control systems (NCSs) present many advantages such as easy installation and maintenance, flexible layouts and structures of components, and efficient allocation and distribution of resources. Consequently, they find potential applications in a variety of emerging industrial systems including multi-agent systems, power grids, tele-operations and cyber-physical systems. The study of NCSs with nonlinear dynamics (i.e., nonlinear NCSs) is a very significant yet challenging topic, and it not only widens application areas of NCSs in practice, but also extends the theoretical framework of NCSs with linear dynamics (i.e., linear NCSs). Numerous issues are required to be resolved towards a fully-fledged theory of industrial nonlinear NCS design. In this dissertation, three important problems of nonlinear NCSs are investigated: The robust filtering problem, the robust model predictive control (MPC) problem and the robust distributed MPC problem of large-scale nonlinear systems. In the robust filtering problem of nonlinear NCSs, the nonlinear system model is subject to uncertainties and external disturbances, and the measurements suffer from time delays governed by a Markov process. Utilizing the Lyapunov theory, the algebraic Hamilton-Jacobi inequality (HJI)-based sufficient conditions are established for designing the H_infty nonlinear filter. Moreover, the developed results are specialized for a special type of nonlinear systems, by presenting the HJI in terms of matrix inequalities. For the robust MPC problem of NCSs, three aspects are considered. Firstly, to reduce the computation and communication load, the networked MPC scheme with an efficient transmission and compensation strategy is proposed, for constrained nonlinear NCSs with disturbances and two-channel packet dropouts. A novel Lyapunov function is constructed to ensure the input-to-state practical stability (ISpS) of the closed-loop system. Secondly, to improve robustness, a networked min-max MPC scheme are developed, for constrained nonlinear NCSs subject to external disturbances, input and state constraints, and network-induced constraints. The ISpS of the resulting nonlinear NCS is established by constructing a new Lyapunov function. Finally, to deal with the issue of unavailability of system state, a robust output feedback MPC scheme is designed for constrained linear systems subject to periodical measurement losses and external disturbances. The rigorous feasibility and stability conditions are established. For the robust distributed MPC problem of large-scale nonlinear systems, three steps are taken to conduct the studies. In the first step, the issue of external disturbances is addressed. A robustness constraint is proposed to handle the external disturbances, based on which a novel robust distributed MPC algorithm is designed. The conditions for guaranteeing feasibility and stability are established, respectively. In the second step, the issue of communication delays are dealt with. By designing the waiting mechanism, a distributed MPC scheme is proposed, and the feasibility and stability conditions are established. In the third step, the robust distributed MPC problem for large-scale nonlinear systems subject to control input constraints, communication delays and external disturbances are studied. A dual-mode robust distributed MPC strategy is designed to deal with the communication delays and the external disturbances simultaneously, and the feasibility and the stability conditions are developed, accordingly. / Graduate / 0548 / 0544

Platooning is an interesting area which involve the possibility of decreasing the fuel consumption of heavy-duty vehicles. By reducing the inter-vehicle spacing in the platoon we can reduce air drag, which in turn reduces fuel consumption. Two fuel-efficient model predictive controllers for HDVs in a platoon has been formulated in this master thesis, both utilizing road grade preview information. The first controller is based on linear programming (LP) algorithms and the second on quadratic programming (QP). These two platooning controllers are compared with each other and with generic controllers from Scania. The LP controller proved to be more fuel-efficient than the QP controller, the Scania controllers are however more fuel-efficient than the LP controller.

Please read the abstract (Summary) in the section, 00front of this document / Thesis (PhD (Electronic Engineering))--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering / PhD / unrestricted

The control and optimization of chemical plants is a major area of research as it has the potential to improve both economic output and plant safety. It is often prudent to separate control and optimization tasks of varying complexities and time scales, creating a hierarchical control structure. Within this structure, it is beneficial for one control layer to be able to account for the effects of other layers. A clear example of this, and the basis of this work, is closed-loop dynamic real-time optimization (CL-DRTO), in which an economic optimization method considers both the plant behavior and the effects of an underlying model predictive controller (MPC). This technique can be expanded on to allow its use and methods to be employed in a greater diversity of applications, particularly unstable and uncertain plant environments. First, this work seeks to improve on existing robust MPC techniques, which incorporate plant uncertainty via direct multi-scenario modelling, by also including future MPC behavior through the use of the CL modelling technique of CL-DRTO. This allows the CL robust MPC to account for how future MPC executions will be affected by uncertain plant behavior. Second, Lyapunov MPC (LMPC) is a generally nonconvex technique which focuses on effective control of plants which exhibit open-loop unstable behavior. A new convex LMPC formulation is presented here which can be readily embedded into a CL-DRTO scheme. Next, uncertainty handling is incorporated directly into a CL-DRTO via a robust multi-scenario method to allow for the economic optimization to take uncertain plant behavior into account while also modelling MPC behavior under plant uncertainty. Finally, the robust CL-DRTO method is computationally expensive, so a decomposition method which separates the robust CL-DRTO into its respective scenario subproblems is developed to improve computation time, especially for large optimization problems. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / It is common for control and optimization of chemical plants to be performed in a multi-layered hierarchy. The ability to predict the behavior of other layers or the future behavior of the same layer can improve overall plant performance. This thesis presents optimization and control frameworks which use this concept to more effectively control and economically optimize chemical plants which are subject to uncertain behavior or instability. The strategy is shown, in a series of simulated case studies, to effectively control chemical plants with uncertain behavior, control and optimize unstable plant systems, and economically optimize uncertain chemical plants. One of the drawbacks of these strategies is the relatively large computation time required to solve the optimization problems. Therefore, for uncertain systems, the problem is separated into smaller pieces which are then coordinated towards a single solution. This results in reduced computation time.

Controle preditivo baseado em modelos (MPC) é uma técnica de controle amplamente utilizada na indústria de processos químicos. Por outro lado, o método de identificação em subespaços (SID) tem se mostrado uma alternativa eficiente para os métodos clássicos de identificação de sistemas. Pela combinação dos conceitos de MPC e SID, surgiu, no final da década de 90, uma nova técnica de controle, denominada controle preditivo com enfoque em subespaços (SPC). Essa técnica também é conhecida como controle preditivo orientado a dados. Ela substitui por um único passo as três etapas do projeto de um MPC: a identificação do modelo, o cálculo do observador de estados e a construção das matrizes de predição. Este trabalho tem como principal objetivo revisar estudos feitos na área de SPC, aplicar esse método em sistemas típicos da indústria química e propor novos algoritmos. São desenvolvidos três algoritmos de excitação interna para o método SPC, que permitem gerar dados persistentemente excitantes enquanto um controle mínimo do processo é garantido. Esses algoritmos possibilitam aplicar identificação em malha fechada, na qual o modelo do controlador SPC é reidentificado utilizando dados previamente excitados. Os controladores SPC e SPC com excitação interna são testados e comparados ao MPC por meio de simulações em dois processos distintos. O primeiro consiste em uma coluna debutanizadora de uma unidade de destilação, para a qual são disponibilizados dois modelos lineares referentes a pontos de operação diferentes. O segundo é um reator de polimerização de estireno com dinâmica não linear, cujo modelo fenomenológico é conhecido. Os resultados dos testes indicam que o SPC é mais suscetível a ruídos de medição. Entretanto, verifica-se que esse controlador corrige perturbações nos set-points das variáveis controladas mais rapidamente que o MPC. Simulações realizadas para o SPC com excitação interna mostram que os algoritmos propostos neste trabalho excitam o sistema satisfatoriamente, de modo que modelos mais precisos são obtidos na reidentificação com os dados excitados. / Model Predictive Control (MPC) technology is widely used in chemical process industries. Subspace identification (SID) on the other hand has proven to be an efficient alternative for classical system identification methods. Based on the results from MPC and SID, it was developed in the late 90s a new control approach, called Subspace Predictive Control (SPC). This approach is also known as data-driven predictive control. In this new method, one single operation replaces the three steps in a MPC controller design: system identification, the state observer design and the predictor matrices construction. The aim of this work is to review studies in the field of SPC, to apply this technology to typical systems of chemical industry and to propose new algorithms. It is developed three internal excitation algorithms for the SPC method, which allow the system to be persistently excited while a minimal control of the process is still guaranteed. These algorithms enable the application of closedloop identification, where the SPC controller model is re-identified using the previously excited data. The SPC controller and the SPC controller with internal excitation are tested through simulation for two different processes. The first one is a debutanizer column of a distillation unit for which two linear models corresponding to two different operating points are available. The second one is a non-linear system consisting of a styrene polymerization reactor. A phenomenological model is provided for this system. Tests results indicate that SPC is more susceptible to measurement noises. However, it is noticed that SPC controller corrects perturbations on set-points faster than MPC. Simulations for the SPC with internal excitation show that the proposed algorithms sufficiently excite the system, in the sense that more precise models are obtained from the re-identification with excited data.

Controle preditivo baseado em modelos (MPC) é uma técnica de controle amplamente utilizada na indústria de processos químicos. Por outro lado, o método de identificação em subespaços (SID) tem se mostrado uma alternativa eficiente para os métodos clássicos de identificação de sistemas. Pela combinação dos conceitos de MPC e SID, surgiu, no final da década de 90, uma nova técnica de controle, denominada controle preditivo com enfoque em subespaços (SPC). Essa técnica também é conhecida como controle preditivo orientado a dados. Ela substitui por um único passo as três etapas do projeto de um MPC: a identificação do modelo, o cálculo do observador de estados e a construção das matrizes de predição. Este trabalho tem como principal objetivo revisar estudos feitos na área de SPC, aplicar esse método em sistemas típicos da indústria química e propor novos algoritmos. São desenvolvidos três algoritmos de excitação interna para o método SPC, que permitem gerar dados persistentemente excitantes enquanto um controle mínimo do processo é garantido. Esses algoritmos possibilitam aplicar identificação em malha fechada, na qual o modelo do controlador SPC é reidentificado utilizando dados previamente excitados. Os controladores SPC e SPC com excitação interna são testados e comparados ao MPC por meio de simulações em dois processos distintos. O primeiro consiste em uma coluna debutanizadora de uma unidade de destilação, para a qual são disponibilizados dois modelos lineares referentes a pontos de operação diferentes. O segundo é um reator de polimerização de estireno com dinâmica não linear, cujo modelo fenomenológico é conhecido. Os resultados dos testes indicam que o SPC é mais suscetível a ruídos de medição. Entretanto, verifica-se que esse controlador corrige perturbações nos set-points das variáveis controladas mais rapidamente que o MPC. Simulações realizadas para o SPC com excitação interna mostram que os algoritmos propostos neste trabalho excitam o sistema satisfatoriamente, de modo que modelos mais precisos são obtidos na reidentificação com os dados excitados. / Model Predictive Control (MPC) technology is widely used in chemical process industries. Subspace identification (SID) on the other hand has proven to be an efficient alternative for classical system identification methods. Based on the results from MPC and SID, it was developed in the late 90s a new control approach, called Subspace Predictive Control (SPC). This approach is also known as data-driven predictive control. In this new method, one single operation replaces the three steps in a MPC controller design: system identification, the state observer design and the predictor matrices construction. The aim of this work is to review studies in the field of SPC, to apply this technology to typical systems of chemical industry and to propose new algorithms. It is developed three internal excitation algorithms for the SPC method, which allow the system to be persistently excited while a minimal control of the process is still guaranteed. These algorithms enable the application of closedloop identification, where the SPC controller model is re-identified using the previously excited data. The SPC controller and the SPC controller with internal excitation are tested through simulation for two different processes. The first one is a debutanizer column of a distillation unit for which two linear models corresponding to two different operating points are available. The second one is a non-linear system consisting of a styrene polymerization reactor. A phenomenological model is provided for this system. Tests results indicate that SPC is more susceptible to measurement noises. However, it is noticed that SPC controller corrects perturbations on set-points faster than MPC. Simulations for the SPC with internal excitation show that the proposed algorithms sufficiently excite the system, in the sense that more precise models are obtained from the re-identification with excited data.

A robust model predictive control algorithm is presented that explicitly handles multiplicative, or parametric, uncertainty in linear discrete models over a finite horizon. The uncertainty in the predicted future states and inputs is bounded by polytopes. The computational cost of running the controller is reduced by calculating matrices offline that provide a means to construct outer approximations to robust constraints to be applied online. The robust algorithm is extended to problems of uncertain models with an allowed probability of violation of constraints. The probabilistic degrees of satisfaction are approximated by one-step ahead sampling, with a greedy solution to the resulting mixed integer problem. An algorithm is given to enlarge a robustly invariant terminal set to exploit the probabilistic constraints. Exponential basis functions are used to create a Robust MPC algorithm for which the predictions are defined over the infinite horizon. The control degrees of freedom are weights that define the bounds on the state and input uncertainty when multiplied by the basis functions. The controller handles multiplicative and additive uncertainty. Robust MPC is applied to the problem of wind turbine control. Rotor speed and tower oscillations are controlled by a low sample rate robust predictive controller. The prediction model has multiplicative and additive uncertainty due to the uncertainty in short-term future wind speeds and in model linearisation. Robust MPC is compared to nominal MPC by means of a high-fidelity numerical simulation of a wind turbine under the two controllers in a wide range of simulated wind conditions.