The Multiple Simultaneous Specification controller design method is an elegant means of designing a single controller to satisfy multiple convex closed loop performance specifications. In this thesis, the method is used to design pitch and roll attitude controllers for a Zagi flying-wing unmanned aerial vehicle from Procerus Technologies. A linear model of the aircraft is developed, in which the lateral and longitudinal motions of the aircraft are decoupled. The controllers are designed for this decoupled state space model. Linear simulations are performed in Simulink, and all performance specifications are satisfied by the closed loop system. Nonlinear, hardware-in-the-loop simulations are carried out using the aircraft, on-board computer, and ground station software. Flight tests are also executed to test the performance of the designed controllers. The closed loop aircraft behaviour is generally as expected, however the desired performance specifications are not strictly met in the nonlinear simulations or in the flight tests.

The Multiple Simultaneous Specification controller design method is an elegant means of designing a single controller to satisfy multiple convex closed loop performance specifications. In this thesis, the method is used to design pitch and roll attitude controllers for a Zagi flying-wing unmanned aerial vehicle from Procerus Technologies. A linear model of the aircraft is developed, in which the lateral and longitudinal motions of the aircraft are decoupled. The controllers are designed for this decoupled state space model. Linear simulations are performed in Simulink, and all performance specifications are satisfied by the closed loop system. Nonlinear, hardware-in-the-loop simulations are carried out using the aircraft, on-board computer, and ground station software. Flight tests are also executed to test the performance of the designed controllers. The closed loop aircraft behaviour is generally as expected, however the desired performance specifications are not strictly met in the nonlinear simulations or in the flight tests.

Today, hybrid electric propulsion technology provides a promising and practical solution for improving vehicle performance, increasing energy efficiency, and reducing harmful emissions, due to the additional flexibility that the technology has provided in the optimal power control and energy management, which are the keys to its success. In this work, a systematic approach for real-time optimal energy management of hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) has been introduced and validated through two HEV/PHEV case studies. Firstly, a new analytical model of the optimal control problem for the Toyota Prius HEV with both offline and real-time solutions was presented and validated through Hardware-in-Loop (HIL) real-time simulation. Secondly, the new online or real-time optimal control algorithm was extended to a multi-regime PHEV by modifying the optimal control objective function and introducing a real-time implementable control algorithm with an adaptive coefficient tuning strategy. A number of practical issues in vehicle control, including drivability, controller integration, etc. are also investigated. The new algorithm was also validated on various driving cycles using both Model-in-Loop (MIL) and HIL environment. This research better utilizes the energy efficiency and emissions reduction potentials of hybrid electric powertrain systems, and forms the foundation for development of the next generation HEVs and PHEVs. / Graduate / laindeece@gmail.com

Satélites artificiais, em sua grande maioria, requerem algum tipo de sistema de controle de atitude (SCA) embarcado. A utilização de simuladores para avaliar este tipo de sistema é uma técnica bastante difundida na _área de engenharia, pois viabiliza a realização de testes de maneira rápida e a um custo menor do que utilizando ambientes com componentes reais. Contudo, de ciências no desenvolvimento de softwares embarcados podem ser difíceis de detectar quando o ambiente de teste não leva em consideração restrições comuns aos ambientes de tempo real. Partindo deste preâmbulo, este trabalho apresenta e analisa a modelagem em UML (Unified Modeling Language) de um sistema de controle de atitude autônomo para satélites estabilizados por rotação, bem como implementação de um ambiente de teste, com base na técnica de simulação hardware-in-the-loop, utilizando um sistema operacional de tempo real para escalonamento das tarefas, e um típico computador de bordo com processador ERC32. Na simulação hardware-in-the-loop o SCA é realimentado por estimativas da atitude em 3 eixos e da velocidade angular do satélite fornecidas pelo sistema de determinação de atitude (SDA). O SDA consiste de um filtro de Kalman estendido (FKE) que processa as medidas vetoriais da direção do Sol e campo geomagnético para gerar as estimativas. Resultados experimentais mostram que o sistema de controle de atitude foi bem-sucedido em regime após uma fase inicial de manobras para aquisição da atitude desejada.

Hybrid testing is an emerging technique for system emulation that uses a transfer system composed of actuators and sensors to couple physical tests of a critical component or substructure to a numerical simulation of the remainder of a system and its complete operating environment. The realisation of modern real-time hybrid tests for multi-body contact-impact problems often proves infeasible due to (i) hardware with bandwidth limitations and (ii) the unavailability of control schemes that provide satisfactory force and position tracking in the presence of sharp non-linearities or discontinuities. Where this is the case, the possibility of employing a pseudo-dynamic technique remains, enabling tests to be conducted on an enlarged time scale thus relaxing bothbandwidth and response time constraints and providing inherent loop stability. Exploiting the pseudo-dynamic technique, this thesis presents the development of Robotic Pseudo-Dynamic Testing (RPsDT), a dedicated method that specifically targets the realisation of hybrid tests for multi-body contact-impact problems using commercial off- the shelve (COTS) industrial robotic manipulators. The RPsDT method is evaluated in on-ground studies of air-to-air refuelling (AAR) maneuvers with probe-hose-drogue systems where the critical contact and coupling phase is tested pseudo-dynamicallywith full-scale refuelling hardware while the flight regime is emulated in simulation. It is shown that the RPsDT method can faithfully reproduce the dominant contact impact phenomena between probe and drogue while minor discrepancies result from the absence of rate-dependant damping in the force feedback measurements. In combination with full-speed robot controlled contact tests, reliable estimates for impact forces, strain distributions and drogue responses to off-centre hits are obtained providing extensive improvements over current predictive capabilities for the in-flight behaviour of refuelling hardware and it is concluded that the technique shows great promise for industrial applications.

<p>Continuously throughout the process of developing Engine Control Units (ECU), the ECU and its control functions need to be dimensioned and tested for the engine itself. Since interaction between an ECU and a physical engine is both expensive and inflexible, software models of the engine are often used instead. One such test system, where an ECU interacts with software models, is called Hardware-in-the-Loop (HiL). This thesis describes a model constructed to facilitate implementation on a HiL testbed. </p><p>The model, derived in Matlab/Simulink, is a Cylinder-by-Cylinder Engine Model (CCEM) reconstructing the angle synchronous torque of a diesel engine. To validate the model, it has been parameterised for the DaimlerChrysler engine OM646, a straight turbocharged four cylinder diesel engine, and tested towards measured data from a Mercedes-Benz C220 test vehicle. Due to hardware related problems, validation could only be performed for low engine speeds where the model shows good results. Future work around this theme ought to include further validation of the model as well as implementation on HiL.</p>

Continuously throughout the process of developing Engine Control Units (ECU), the ECU and its control functions need to be dimensioned and tested for the engine itself. Since interaction between an ECU and a physical engine is both expensive and inflexible, software models of the engine are often used instead. One such test system, where an ECU interacts with software models, is called Hardware-in-the-Loop (HiL). This thesis describes a model constructed to facilitate implementation on a HiL testbed. The model, derived in Matlab/Simulink, is a Cylinder-by-Cylinder Engine Model (CCEM) reconstructing the angle synchronous torque of a diesel engine. To validate the model, it has been parameterised for the DaimlerChrysler engine OM646, a straight turbocharged four cylinder diesel engine, and tested towards measured data from a Mercedes-Benz C220 test vehicle. Due to hardware related problems, validation could only be performed for low engine speeds where the model shows good results. Future work around this theme ought to include further validation of the model as well as implementation on HiL.

Hybrid solid oxide fuel cell / gas turbine (SOFC/GT) systems offer high efficiency power generation, but face numerous integration and operability challenges. This dissertation addresses the application of hardware-in-the-loop simulation (HILS) to explore the performance of a solid oxide fuel cell stack and gas turbine when combined into a hybrid system. Specifically, this project entailed developing and demonstrating a methodology for coupling a numerical SOFC subsystem model with a gas turbine that has been modified with supplemental process flow and control paths to mimic a hybrid system. This HILS approach was implemented with the U.S. Department of Energy Hybrid Performance Project (HyPer) located at the National Energy Technology Laboratory. By utilizing HILS the facility provides a cost effective and capable platform for characterizing the response of hybrid systems to dynamic variations in operating conditions. HILS of a hybrid system was accomplished by first interfacing a numerical model with operating gas turbine hardware. The real-time SOFC stack model responds to operating turbine flow conditions in order to predict the level of thermal effluent from the SOFC stack. This simulated level of heating then dynamically sets the turbine's "firing" rate to reflect the stack output heat rate. Second, a high-speed computer system with data acquisition capabilities was integrated with the existing controls and sensors of the turbine facility. In the future, this will allow for the utilization of high-fidelity fuel cell models that infer cell performance parameters while still computing the simulation in real-time. Once the integration of the numeric and the hardware simulation components was completed, HILS experiments were conducted to evaluate hybrid system performance. The testing identified non-intuitive transient responses arising from the large thermal capacitance of the stack that are inherent to hybrid systems. Furthermore, the tests demonstrated the capabilities of HILS as a research tool for investigating the dynamic behavior of SOFC/GT hybrid power generation systems.

Recently there has been a tremendous growth of research emphasizing control of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) either in isolation or in teams. As a matter of fact, UAVs increasingly find their way to applications, especially in military and law enforcement (e.g., reconnaissance, remote delivery of urgent equipment/material, resource assessment, environmental monitoring, battlefield monitoring, ordnance delivery, etc.). This trend will continue in the future, as UAVs are poised to replace the human-in-the-loop during dangerous missions. Civilian applications of UAVs are also envisioned such as crop dusting, geological surveying, search and rescue operations, etc. In this thesis we propose a new online multiresolution path planning algorithm for a small UAV with limited on-board computational resources. The proposed approach assumes that the UAV has detailed information of the environment and the obstacles only in its vicinity. Information about far-away obstacles is also available, albeit less accurately. The proposed algorithm uses the fast lifting wavelet transform (FLWT) to get a multiresolution cell decomposition of the environment, whose dimension is commensurate to the on-board computational resources. A topological graph representation of the multiresolution cell decomposition is constructed efficiently, directly from the approximation and detail wavelet coefficients. Dynamic path planning is sequentially executed for an optimal path using the A* algorithm over the resulting graph. The proposed path planning algorithm is implemented on-line on a small autopilot. Comparisons with the standard D*-lite algorithm are also presented. We also investigate the problem of generating a smooth, planar reference path from a discrete optimal path. Upon the optimal path being represented as a sequence of cells in square geometry, we derive a smooth B-spline path that is constrained inside a channel that is induced by the geometry of the cells. To this end, a constrained optimization problem is formulated by setting up geometric linear constraints as well as boundary conditions. Subsequently, we construct B-spline path templates by solving a set of distinct optimization problems. For an application to the UAV motion planning, the path templates are incorporated to replace parts of the entire path by the smooth B-spline paths. Each path segment is stitched together while preserving continuity to obtain a final smooth reference path to be used for path following control. The path following control for a small fixed-wing UAV to track the prescribed smooth reference path is also addressed. Assuming the UAV is equipped with an autopilot for low level control, we adopt a kinematic error model with respect to the moving Serret-Frenet frame attached to a path for tracking controller design. A kinematic path following control law that commands heading rate is presented. Backstepping is applied to derive the roll angle command by taking into account the approximate closed-loop roll dynamics. A parameter adaptation technique is employed to account for the inaccurate time constant of the closed-loop roll dynamics during actual implementation. Finally, we implement the proposed hierarchical path control of a small UAV on the actual hardware platform, which is based on an 1/5 scale R/C model airframe (Decathlon) and the autopilot hardware and software. Based on the hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) simulation environment, the proposed hierarchical path control algorithm has been validated through the on-line, real-time implementation on a small micro-controller. By a seamless integration of the control algorithms for path planning, path smoothing, and path following, it has been demonstrated that the UAV equipped with a small autopilot having limited computational resources manages to accomplish the path control objective to reach the goal while avoiding obstacles with minimal human intervention.

This thesis attempts to tune any controller without the mathematical model knowledge of the system it is controlling. For that purpose, the optimization algorithm of MATLAB&reg / 6.5 / Nonlinear Control Design Blockset (NCD) is adapted for real-time executions and combined with a hardware-in-the-loop simulation provided by MATLAB&reg / 6.5 / Real-Time Windows Target (RTWT). A noise-included model of a DC motor position control system is obtained in MATLAB&reg / / SIMULINK first and simulated to test the modified algorithm in some aspects. Then the presented methodology is verified using the physical plant (DC motor position control system) where tuning algorithm is driven mainly by the real system data and the required performance parameters specified by a user defined constraint window are successfully satisfied. Resultant improvements on the step response behavior of DC motor position control system are shown for two case studies.