<p dir="ltr">Unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) offer a versatile platform for various maritime applications, including research, surveillance, and search-and-rescue operations. A critical capability for USVs is maintaining position (station keeping) in dynamic environments and coordinating movement with other USVs (formation control) for collaborative missions. This thesis investigates control strategies for USVs operating in challenging conditions. </p><p dir="ltr">The initial focus is on evaluating traditional control methods like Backstepping and Sliding Mode controllers for station keeping in simulated environments with disturbances. The results from these tests pointed towards the need for a more robust control technique, like deep-learning based control for enhanced performance. </p><p dir="ltr">The thesis then explores formation control, a crucial aspect of cooperative USV missions. A vision-based passive control strategy utilizing a virtual leader concept is proposed. This approach leverages onboard cameras to detect markers on other USVs, eliminating the need for direct communication and potentially improving scalability and resilience. </p><p dir="ltr">Then the thesis presents vision-based formation control architecture and the station keeping controller evaluations. Simulation results are presented, analyzed, and used to draw conclusions about the effectiveness of the proposed approaches. Finally, the thesis discusses the implications of the findings and proposes potential future research directions</p>

Space debris growth and an influx in space traffic will create a need for increased space traffic management. Due to orbital population density and likely future growth, the implementation of a slot architecture to Sun-synchronous orbit is considered in order to mitigate conjunctions among active satellites. This paper furthers work done in Sun-synchronous orbit slot architecture design and focuses on two main aspects. First, an in-depth relative motion analysis of satellites with respect to their assigned slots is presented. Then, a method for developing a slot architecture from a specific set of user defined inputs is derived.

A vehicles ability to detect and estimate its surroundings is important for ensuring the safety of the vehicle and passengers regardless of the level of vehicle autonomy. With an improved road and lane estimation, advanced driver-assistance systems will be able to provide earlier and more accurate warnings and actions to prevent a possible accident. Current lane boundary estimations rely on camera and inertial sensor data to detect and estimate relevant lane boundaries in the vehicles surroundings. The current lane boundary estimation system struggles to provide correct estimations at distances exceeding 75 meters and has a performance which is affected by environmental effects. The methods in this thesis show how map data, together with sensor fusion with radar, camera, inertial measurement unit and global navigation satellite system data is able to provide an improvement to the lane boundary estimations. The map based estimation system is implemented and evaluated for high speed roads (highways and country roads) where lane boundary estimations for distances above 75 meters are needed. The results are conducted in a simulate environment and show how the map based system is able to correct unreliable sensor input to provide more precise boundary estimations. The map based system is also able to provide an up to 36% relative increase in correctly identified objects within ego vehicles lane between 12.5-150 meters in front of ego vehicle. The results indicate the ability to extend the horizon in which driver-assistance functions are able to operate, thus increasing the safety of future autonomous or semi-autonomous vehicles. Future work within the subject is needed to apply map based estimations on urban areas. The precision of such an system also relies on precise positional data. Incorporation of more precise global navigation data would be able to show an increased performance. / Ett fordons förmåga att upptäcka och uppskatta sin omgivning är viktig för att säkerställa fordonets och passagerarnas säkerhet oavsett fordonets autonominivå. Med en förbättrad väg- och körfältsuppskattning kommer avancerade förarassistanssystem att kunna ge tidigare och mer exakta varningar och åtgärder för att förhindra en eventuell olycka. Aktuella estimeringar av körfältsgränser är beroende av kamera och tröghetssensordata för att upptäcka och uppskatta relevanta körfältsgränser i fordonets omgivning. Det nuvarande estimerings-systemet upvisar inkorrekta uppskattningar på avstånd över 75 meter och har en prestanda som påverkas av den omgivande miljön. Metoderna i detta examensarbete visar hur kartdata, tillsammans med sensorfusion av radar, kamera, tröghetsmätenhet och globala satellitnavigeringsdata, kan ge en förbättrad estimering av körfältsgränser. Det kartbaserade systemet är implementerat och utvärderat för höghastighetsvägar (motorvägar och landsvägar) där estimeringar av körfältsgränser för avstånd över 75 meter behövs. Resultaten utförs i en simulerad miljö och visar hur det kartbaserade systemet kan korrigera opålitlig sensorinmatning för att ge mer exakta gränsuppskattningar. Systemet kan också ge en upp till 36% relativ ökning av korrekt identifierade objekt inom ego-fordonets körfält mellan 12.5-150 meter framför ego-fordonet. Resultaten indikerar förmågan att förlänga horisonten som förarassistansfunktioner kan fungera i, vilket ökar säkerheten för framtida autonoma eller halvautonoma fordon. Framtida arbeten inom ämnet behövs för att tillämpa kartbaserade uppskattningar på tätorter. Precisionen hos ett sådant system är också beroende av mer exakt positionsdata. Inkorporering av mer exakt global navigationsdata skulle i detta fall kunna visa en ökad sytemprestanda.

<p>In this thesis the problem of multitarget tracking in multistatic sensor networks is studied. This thesis focuses on tracking airborne targets by utilizing transmitters of opportunity in the surveillance region. Passive Coherent Location (PCL) system, which uses existing commercial signals (e.g., FM broadcast, digital TV) as the illuminators of opportunity for target tracking, is an emerging technology in air defence systems. PCL systems have many advantages over conventional radar systems such as low cost, covert operation and low vulnerability to electronic counter measures.</p> <p>One of another opportunistic signals available in the surveillance region is multipath signal. In this thesis, the multipath target return signals from distinct propagation modes that are resolvable by the receiver are exploited. When resolved multipath returns are not utilized within the tracker, i.e., discarded as clutter, potential information conveyed by the multipath detections of the same target is wasted. In this case, spurious tracks are formed using target-originated multipath measurements, but with an incorrect propagation mode assumption. Integrating multipath information into the tracker (and not discarding it) can help improve the accuracy of tracking and reduce the number of false tracks.</p> <p>In this thesis, these opportunistic measurements, i.e., commercial broadcast signals measurements in PCL tracking and resolvable multipath target return measurements in multipath assisted tracking are exploited. We give the optimal formulations for all of the above problems as well as the performance evaluations using PCRLB. Simulation results illustrate the performance of the algorithms.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

<p dir="ltr">This thesis aims to assess the efficacy of adaptive Gaussian mixture filtering for an inertial navigation-based cislunar application. The thesis focuses on a fully autonomous system, where the navigation system is solely reliant on onboard sensors and receives no navigation information from external tracking systems. The proposed adaptive filter is tested under non-ideal conditions. Specifically, this thesis considers the challenging case where range information is unavailable, and instead, only bearings angles with respect to illuminated celestial bodies are measured. The performance of the adaptive filter is compared to the unscented Kalman filter (UKF), and the filter consistency and errors are compared. The proposed filter addresses challenges in linearization errors that accrue in the UKF measurement update equations. The adaptive filter is shown to be a consistent estimator, significantly outperforming the UKF. Considering design requirements for similar navigation missions, recommendations and practical considerations are suggested for future cislunar autonomous navigation applications</p>

<p dir="ltr">In this thesis, a MATLAB model was used to simulate a 2-vehicle platoon where the lead truck is a conventional class 8 vehicle while the key parameters of the following truck was tested in various road conditions to minimize Inter vehicular Distance (IVD) and maximize fuel savings while ensuring safety</p>

It is a well-recognized fact that unmanned aerial vehicles are an essential element in today’s network-centric integrated battlefield environment. Compared to solo UAV missions, multiple unmanned aerial vehicles deployed in co-operative mode, offer many advantages that has motivated UAV researchers all over the world to evolve concept of operations that aims in achieving a paradigm shift from traditional ”dull” missions to perform ”dirty” and ”dangerous” missions. In future success of a mission will depend on interaction among UAV groups with no interaction with any ground entity. To reach this capability level, it is necessary for researchers, to first understand the various levels of autonomy and the crucial role that information and communication plays in making these autonomy levels possible. The thesis is in four parts: (i) Development of an organized framework to realize the goal of achieving fully autonomous systems. (ii) Design of UAV grouping algorithm and coordination tactics for ground attack missions. (iii) Cooperative network management in GPS denied environments. (iv) UAV group tactical path and goal re-plan in GPS denied wide area urban environments. This research thesis represents many first steps taken in the study of autonomous UAV systems and in particular group autonomy. An organized framework for autonomous mission control level by defining various sublevels, classifying the existing solutions and highlighting the various research opportunities available at each level is discussed. Significant contribution to group autonomy research, by providing first of its kind solution for UAV grouping based on Dubins’ path, establishing GPS protected wireless network capable of operating in GPS denied environment and demonstration of group tactical path and goal re-plan in a layered persistent ISR mission is presented. Algorithms discussed in this thesis are generic in nature and can be applied to higher autonomous mission control levels, involving strategic decisions among UAVs, satellites and ground forces in a network centric environment.

<div>With more and more videos taken from dash cams on thousands of cars, retrieving these videos and searching for important information is a daunting task. The purpose of this work is to mine some key road and vehicle motion attributes in a large-scale driving video data set for traffic analysis, sensing algorithm development and autonomous driving test benchmarks. Current sensing and control of autonomous cars based on full-view identification makes it difficult to maintain a high-frequency with a fast-moving vehicle, since computation is increasingly used to cope with driving environment changes.</div><div><br></div><div>A big challenge in video data mining is how to deal with huge amounts of data. We use a compact representation called the road profile system to visualize the road environment in long 2D images. It reduces the data from each frame of image to one line, thereby compressing the video clip to the image. This data dimensionality reduction method has several advantages: First, the data size is greatly compressed. The data is compressed from a video to an image, and each frame in the video is compressed into a line. The data size is compressed hundreds of times. While the size and dimensionality of the data has been compressed greatly, the useful information in the driving video is still completely preserved, and motion information is even better represented more intuitively. Because of the data and dimensionality reduction, the identification algorithm computational efficiency is higher than the full-view identification method, and it makes the real-time identification on road is possible. Second, the data is easier to be visualized, because the data is reduced in dimensionality, and the three-dimensional video data is compressed into two-dimensional data, the reduction is more conducive to the visualization and mutual comparison of the data. Third, continuously changing attributes are easier to show and be captured. Due to the more convenient visualization of two-dimensional data, the position, color and size of the same object within a few frames will be easier to compare and capture. At the same time, in many cases, the trouble caused by tracking and matching can be eliminated. Based on the road profile system, there are three tasks in autonomous driving are achieved using the road profile images.</div><div><br></div><div>The first application is road edge detection under different weather and appearance for road following in autonomous driving to capture the road profile image and linearity profile image in the road profile system. This work uses naturalistic driving video data mining to study the appearance of roads, which covers large-scale road data and changes. This work excavated a large number of naturalistic driving video sets to sample the light-sensitive area for color feature distribution. The effective road contour image is extracted from the long-time driving video, thereby greatly reducing the amount of video data. Then, the weather and lighting type can be identified. For each weather and lighting condition obvious features are I identified at the edge of the road to distinguish the road edge. </div><div><br></div><div>The second application is detecting vehicle interactions in driving videos via motion profile images to capture the motion profile image in the road profile system. This work uses visual actions recorded in driving videos taken by a dashboard camera to identify this interaction. The motion profile images of the video are filtered at key locations, thereby reducing the complexity of object detection, depth sensing, target tracking and motion estimation. The purpose of this reduction is for decision making of vehicle actions such as lane changing, vehicle following, and cut-in handling.</div><div><br></div><div>The third application is motion planning based on vehicle interactions and driving video. Taking note of the fact that a car travels in a straight line, we simply identify a few sample lines in the view to constantly scan the road, vehicles, and environment, generating a portion of the entire video data. Without using redundant data processing, we performed semantic segmentation to streaming road profile images. We plan the vehicle's path/motion using the smallest data set possible that contains all necessary information for driving.</div><div><br></div><div>The results are obtained efficiently, and the accuracy is acceptable. The results can be used for driving video mining, traffic analysis, driver behavior understanding, etc.</div>

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Yan, Jiaxiang. M.S.E.C.E., Purdue University, May 2013. Modeling, Monitoring and Optimization of Discrete Event Systems Using Petri Nets. Major Professor: Lingxi Li. In last decades, the research of discrete event systems (DESs) has attracts more and more attention because of the fast development of intelligent control strategies. Such control measures combine the conventional control strategies with discrete decision-making processes which simulate human decision-making processes. Due to the scale and complexity of common DESs, the dedicated models, monitoring methods and optimal control strategies for them are necessary. Among various DES models, Petri nets are famous for the advantage in dealing with asynchronous processes. They have been widely applied in intelligent transportation systems (ITS) and communication technology in recent years. With encoding of the Petri net state, we can also enable fault detection and identification capability in DESs and mitigate potential human errors. This thesis studies various problems in the context of DESs that can be modeled by Petri nets. In particular, we focus on systematic modeling, asynchronous monitoring and optimal control strategies design of Petri nets. This thesis starts by looking at the systematic modeling of ITS. A microscopic model of signalized intersection and its two-layer timed Petri net representation is proposed in this thesis, where the first layer is the representation of the intersection and the second layer is the representation of the traffic light system. Deterministic and stochastic transitions are both involved in such Petri net representation. The detailed operation process of such Petri net representation is stated. The improvement of such Petri net representation is also provided with comparison to previous models. Then we study the asynchronous monitoring of sensor networks. An event sequence reconstruction algorithm for a given sensor network based on asynchronous observations of its state changes is proposed in this thesis. We assume that the sensor network is modeled as a Petri net and the asynchronous observations are in the form of state (token) changes at different places in the Petri net. More specifically, the observed sequences of state changes are provided by local sensors and are asynchronous, i.e., they only contain partial information about the ordering of the state changes that occur. We propose an approach that is able to partition the given net into several subnets and reconstruct the event sequence for each subnet. Then we develop an algorithm that is able to reconstruct the event sequences for the entire net that are consistent with: 1) the asynchronous observations of state changes; 2) the event sequences of each subnet; and 3) the structure of the given Petri net. We discuss the algorithmic complexity. The final problem studied in this thesis is the optimal design method of Petri net controllers with fault-tolerant ability. In particular, we consider multiple faults detection and identification in Petri nets that have state machine structures (i.e., every transition in the net has only one input place and one output place). We develop the approximation algorithms to design the fault-tolerant Petri net controller which achieves the minimal number of connections with the original controller. A design example for an automated guided vehicle (AGV) system is also provided to illustrate our approaches.

<p>This thesis presents solutions to some of the problems facing Autonomous Surface Vehicle (ASV) deployments in inland waterways through the development of navigational and control systems. Fluvial systems are one of the hardest inland waterways to navigate and are thus used as a use-case for system development. The systems are built to reduce the reliance on a-prioris during ASV operation. This is crucial for exceptionally dynamic environments such as fluvial bodies of water that have poorly defined routes and edges, can change course in short time spans, carry away and deposit obstacles, and expose or cover shoals and man-made structures as their water level changes. While navigation of fluvial systems is exceptionally difficult potential autonomous data collection can aid in important scientific missions in under studied environments.</p> <p><br></p> <p>The work has four contributions targeting solutions to four fundamental problems present in fluvial system navigation and control. To sense the course of fluvial systems for navigable path determination a fluvial segmentation study is done and a novel dataset detailed. To enable rapid path computations and augmentations in a fast moving environment a Dubins path generator and augmentation algorithm is presented ans is used in conjunction with an Integral Line-Of-Sight (ILOS) path following method. To rapidly avoid unseen/undetected obstacles present in fluvial environments a Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) agent is built and tested across domains to create dynamic local paths that can be rapidly affixed to for collision avoidance. Finally, a custom low-cost and deployable ASV, BREAM (Boat for Robotic Engineering and Applied Machine-Learning), capable of operating in fluvial environments is presented along with an autonomy package used in providing base level sensing and autonomy processing capability to varying platforms.</p> <p><br></p> <p>Each of these contributions form a part of a larger documented Fluvial Navigation Control Architecture (FNCA) that is proposed as a way to aid in a-priori free navigation of fluvial waterways. The architecture relates the navigational structures into high, mid, and low-level controller Guidance and Navigational Control (GNC) layers that are designed to increase cross vehicle and domain deployments. Each component of the architecture is documented, tested, and its application to the control architecture as a whole is reported.</p>