This thesis focuses on making improvements to time-delayed teleoperation systems, with both direct and semi-autonomous haptic control, by addressing the challenges associated with force-position (F-P) predictive architectures. As the time delay from the communication channel increases, system stability and performance degrade. Previously, solutions focused on communication channel stability and environment force estimation methods that primarily rely on linearization of the Hunt-Crossley (HC) contact model. These result in a loss of transparency in the system and limiting use cases from linearization assumptions. Moreover, semi-autonomous solutions aimed at decreasing user effort and automating subtasks, such as obstacle avoidance and user guidance, require training or singularly focus on joint space tasks. This work addresses the shortcomings of the aforementioned methods by refocusing on system components to achieve more favorable dynamics during environment contact with the use of a series elastic actuator (SEA), investigating alternative HC parameter estimation techniques, and synthesizing an assistive semi-autonomous control framework that predicts user intention recognition and automates gross motion tasks. Experimental results with a remote SEA demonstrate improved performance with stiff environments in delays of up to two seconds round trip time. The coupling of the force and position through the actuator along with simultaneous sensing capabilities also show robustness for contact with soft environments. Further improvements with soft environment contact are achieved through HC parameter estimation, with smooth parameter update switching using a Sigmoid function. A novel application of Chebyshev polynomial approximation for adaptive parameter estimation of the HC model was also proposed. This approach provides control via backstepping with adaptive parameter estimation using Lyapunov methods. Additionally, this method reduces excitation requirements by using nonlinear swapping and the data accumulation concept to guarantee parameter convergence. A simulated teleoperation system demonstrates the effectiveness of this approach and initial results from experiment show promise for this approach in practice. Finally, a user study involving a pick and place task produced favorable results for the proposed semi-autonomous framework which significantly reduced task completion times. / Master of Science / Teleoperated systems are powerful solutions for remotely executing tasks in situations where autonomous solutions are not robust enough and/or user knowledge is desired for a task. However, teleoperation performance and stability is degraded by delays in the communication channel. A common way to deal with time delay is to use a predictive controller on the local side to cancel out the delay by knowing the remote side dynamics. Previous approaches have focused on stabilizing the communication channel or the use of estimators and observers to better capture the remote side dynamics. The drawback of these approaches is that they achieve stability at the expense of system transparency, leading to divergence in the force and position matching between the master and remote side. Many of the methods for environment force estimation involves linearizing contact models, creating limitations in their application. Moreover, semi-autonomous solutions aimed at decreasing user effort and automating subtasks such as obstacle avoidance and user guidance require training data sets for the algorithm or only focus individually on joint space tasks. This thesis addresses the shortcomings of the aforementioned methods by refocusing on system components to achieve more favorable dynamics using a series elastic actuator (SEA) while interacting with the environment, investigating nonlinear and linear contact model estimation methods for identifying parameters of the Hunt-Crossley (HC) model, and synthesising an assistive semi-autonomous control framework that predicts user intention for task execution. Experimental results for the use of an SEA demonstrate improved performance with stiff environments in delays of up to two seconds round trip time (RTT). The coupling of the force and position through the actuator along with simultaneous sensing capabilities also showed robustness for contact with soft environments. Various estimation methods for HC parameter identification was investigated to improve the local side model. A novel application of Chebyshev polynomial approximation of the HC model with adaptive parameter estimation was also proposed to provide control along with decreasing the excitation requirements by using backsteping control with nonlinear swapping and the data accumulation concept. A simulated teleoperation system demonstrated the effectiveness of this approach with a smooth paramater update transition. Initial results from experiment also show promise for this approach in practice. Finally, a user study involving a pick and place task produced favorable results for the proposed semi-autonomous framework which significantly reduced task completion times.

The purpose of this thesis is to develop new stability conditions for several linear dynamic systems, including linear parameter-varying (LPV), time-delay systems (LPVTD), slow LPV systems, and parameter-dependent linear time invariant (LTI) systems. These stability conditions are less conservative and/or computationally easier to apply than existing ones. This dissertation is composed of four parts. In the first part of this thesis, the complete stability domain for LTI parameter-dependent (LTIPD) systems is synthesized by extending existing results in the literature. This domain is calculated through a guardian map which involves the determinant of the Kronecker sum of a matrix with itself. The stability domain is synthesized for both single- and multi-parameter dependent LTI systems. The single-parameter case is easily computable, whereas the multi-parameter case is more involved. The determinant of the bialternate sum of a matrix with itself is also exploited to reduce the computational complexity. In the second part of the thesis, a class of parameter-dependent Lyapunov functions is proposed, which can be used to assess the stability properties of single-parameter LTIPD systems in a non-conservative manner. It is shown that stability of LTIPD systems is equivalent to the existence of a Lyapunov function of a polynomial type (in terms of the parameter) of known, bounded degree satisfying two matrix inequalities. The bound of polynomial degree of the Lyapunov functions is then reduced by taking advantage of the fact that the Lyapunov matrices are symmetric. If the matrix multiplying the parameter is not full rank, the polynomial order can be reduced even further. It is also shown that checking the feasibility of these matrix inequalities over a compact set can be cast as a convex optimization problem. Such Lyapunov functions and stability conditions for affine single-parameter LTIPD systems are then generalized to single-parameter polynomially-dependent LTIPD systems and affine multi-parameter LTIPD systems. The third part of the thesis provides one of the first attempts to derive computationally tractable criteria for analyzing the stability of LPV time-delayed systems. It presents both delay-independent and delay-dependent stability conditions, which are derived using appropriately selected Lyapunov-Krasovskii functionals. According to the system parameter dependence, these functionals can be selected to obtain increasingly non-conservative results. Gridding techniques may be used to cast these tests as Linear Matrix Inequalities (LMI's). In cases when the system matrices depend affinely or quadratically on the parameter, gridding may be avoided. These LMI's can be solved efficiently using available software. A numerical example of a time-delayed system motivated by a metal removal process is used to demonstrate the theoretical results. In the last part of the thesis, topics for future investigation are proposed. Among the most interesting avenues for research in this context, it is proposed to extend the existing stability analysis results to controller synthesis, which will be based on the same Lyapunov functions used to derive the nonconservative stability conditions. While designing the dynamic ontroller for linear and parameter-dependent systems, it is desired to take the advantage of the rank deficiency of the system matrix multiplying the parameter such that the controller is of lower dimension, or rank deficient without sacrificing the performance of closed-loop systems.

<p>Nonlinear systems occur in industrial processes, economical systems, biotechnology and in many other areas. The thesis treats methods for system identification and control of such nonlinear systems, and applies the proposed methods to a solar heating/cooling plant. </p><p>Two applications, an anaerobic digestion process and a domestic solar heating system are first used to illustrate properties of an existing nonlinear recursive prediction error identification algorithm. In both cases, the accuracy of the obtained nonlinear black-box models are comparable to the results of application specific grey-box models. Next a convergence analysis is performed, where conditions for convergence are formulated. The results, together with the examples, indicate the need of a method for providing initial parameters for the nonlinear prediction error algorithm. Such a method is then suggested and shown to increase the usefulness of the prediction error algorithm, significantly decreasing the risk for convergence to suboptimal minimum points. </p><p>Next, the thesis treats model based control of systems with input signal dependent time delays. The approach taken is to develop a controller for systems with constant time delays, and embed it by input signal dependent resampling; the resampling acting as an interface between the system and the controller.</p><p>Finally a solar collector field for combined cooling and heating of office buildings is used to illustrate the system identification and control strategies discussed earlier in the thesis, the control objective being to control the solar collector output temperature. The system has nonlinear dynamic behavior and large flow dependent time delays. The simulated evaluation using measured disturbances confirm that the controller works as intended. A significant reduction of the impact of variations in solar radiation on the collector outlet temperature is achieved, though the limited control range of the system itself prevents full exploitation of the proposed feedforward control. The methods and results contribute to a better utilization of solar power.</p>

Dentre os fatores limitantes dos sistemas de controle, o tempo morto está entre os mais críticos e de difícil detecção sem testes intrusivos. O conhecimento do seu valor é essencial para a identificação de modelos e na auditoria de desempenho de sistemas de controle. Em virtude disto, o presente trabalho propõe uma metodologia eficaz para estimá-lo utilizando apenas dados históricos de processo em malha fechada. A principal vantagem frente a técnicas disponíveis na literatura é a não necessidade de testes intrusivos. A metodologia é baseada em um tratamento de sinal para remoção dos efeitos do distúrbio não medido e dos erros de modelo. O tratamento de sinal consiste na minimização das oscilações do sinal erro em malha aberta suavizado como função do tempo morto. Diversas formulações de função objetivo e procedimentos de suavização foram estudados visando facilitar a estimação do parâmetro. A qualidade da metodologia é ilustrada através de simulações em uma série de cenários, os quais simulam processos lineares de diferentes características sob o efeito de distúrbios distintos. A metodologia também é testada frente a estudo de casos com dados reais de processo industrial em malhas de nível e temperatura. Os resultados são comparados com métodos da literatura e demonstram que o método proposto foi eficaz na estimação do tempo morto para a maioria dos casos. / Among the limiting factors of control systems, the pure time delay is one of the most critical and difficult to estimate without an intrusive perturbation. The knowledge of its value is essential for model identification and control loop performance assessment. This work proposes a methodology to determine dead time using ordinary closed loop operating data. The main advantage over available techniques is the non-necessity of intrusive plant tests. The proposed approach is based on a signal processing for removing the effects of the unmeasured disturbances and the model-plant mismatches. The signal processing consists of the minimization of the oscillations of the smoothing open loop error as a function of the pure time delay. Several objective function formulations and smoothing procedures were studied in order to facilitate parameter estimation. The quality of the methodology is illustrated by simulations in a series of scenarios, which simulate linear processes of different characteristics under the effect of different disturbances. The methodology is also tested in case studies with real industrial process data. Results are compared to literature approaches and show the method was effective to estimate the pure time delay for most cases.

Made available in DSpace on 2017-07-10T19:25:05Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Ricardo Michelan.pdf: 1556017 bytes, checksum: afb5e635f0be1f33237cf8c8081a3aa1 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2005-06-27 / The automation of the the monitorated harvest ends introducing systematic errors to the process, for this reason, a methodology of filtering of data became necessary for obtaining confident maps and it treats about the mean error factor, which is the delay time. The delay time is that spent between the cutting of the plant by the platform s bar and the passage of the grain by the sensor of productivity and humidity. For its determination, a data set will be analysed with 10 different delay time, from 0 to 27 seconds, in an interval of 3 seconds. The filtering begins by the determination of the time of stuffing and emptying that is the one which all the spaces and internal components of the combine are filled or deflated by the grains mass occurred in each input and output of the combine. In this process were eliminated 5,69% of the total points, being the process more efficient in the elimination of points, because it acts mainly in the plot s heads, where the most errors occurs. For the width error of platform were eliminated only 0,09% of the points of data. At the points having sign fails of GPS differential correction, in average 2,04% were eliminated. In the filtering of data, in average 2,27 % of the points were eliminated. In localization errors, all the points having until one meter of distance were removed, eliminating in average 0,14% of the data. At the end of the filtering process, the subsequent phase was the determination of the correct delay time for the variables humid productivity, humidity and elevation. As the delay time is directly linked with the combine speed inside the transport, areas with homogeneous speed were considerated. Each one of the 12 sub- areas from 10 data sets were submitted to the process of analysis of spatial dependence of the better semivariogram´s adjust. The trend more emphasized in the tabulation of the semivariogram parameters is the linearity of the nugget effect for the factor elevation, originating from own absence of the delay time of this data, since the elevation is passed joinly to the geodetic coordinates by DGPS, for the harvest monitor. The determination method of the delay time and the filtering process were satisfactory, meanly for humid productivity and humidity, despite of the high natural data variability. / A colheita monitorada é feita de vários processos, e nesses, podem ocorrer erros, por isso, uma metodologia de filtragem de dados torna-se necessária para obtenção de mapas confiáveis e ela gira em torno do principal fator de erro, que é o tempo de atraso. O tempo de atraso é aquele despendido entre o corte da planta na barra de corte da plataforma e a passagem do grão pelo sensor de produtividade e umidade. Para determinação destes erros, um conjunto de dados foi analisado com 10 tempos de atraso diferentes, sendo de zero a 27 segundos, com um intervalo de 3 segundos. A filtragem começa pela determinação do tempo de enchimento e esvaziamento, que é o tempo em que todos os espaços e componentes internos da colhedora são preenchidos, ou esvaziados, pela massa de grãos, ocorrida em cada entrada e saída da colhedora. Neste processo foram eliminados 5,69% dos pontos totais, sendo o processo que mais eliminou pontos, pois, atuou principalmente nas cabeceiras do talhão, onde ocorreu a maioria dos erros. Para o erro de largura de plataforma foram eliminados apenas 0,09% dos pontos de dados. Nos pontos com falha do sinal de correção diferencial do GPS, foram eliminados em média 2,04%. Na filtragem de dados de umidade, foram eliminados em média 2,27% dos pontos. Em erros de localização, foram removidos todos os pontos com até um metro de distância, eliminando em média 0,14% dos dados. Ao término do processo de filtragem, a etapa subseqüente foi à determinação do correto tempo de atraso para as variáveis produtividade úmida, umidade e altitude. Consideraram-se 12 zonas com velocidades de deslocamento homogêneas. Cada uma das 12 zonas dos 10 conjuntos de dados foram submetidas ao processo de análise de dependência espacial. O resultado mais marcante na analise espacial dos dados é a linearidade dos efeitos pepita para o fator elevação, proveniente da própria falta do tempo de atraso destes dados, já que a elevação é transmitida juntamente com as coordenadas geodésicas pelo DGPS, para o monitor de produtividade. O método de determinação dos tempos de atraso e o processo de filtragem foram satisfatórios, principalmente para produtividade úmida e umidade, apesar da alta variabilidade natural dos dados.

Made available in DSpace on 2017-05-12T14:48:27Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Ricardo Michelan.pdf: 1556017 bytes, checksum: afb5e635f0be1f33237cf8c8081a3aa1 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2005-06-27 / The automation of the the monitorated harvest ends introducing systematic errors to the process, for this reason, a methodology of filtering of data became necessary for obtaining confident maps and it treats about the mean error factor, which is the delay time. The delay time is that spent between the cutting of the plant by the platform s bar and the passage of the grain by the sensor of productivity and humidity. For its determination, a data set will be analysed with 10 different delay time, from 0 to 27 seconds, in an interval of 3 seconds. The filtering begins by the determination of the time of stuffing and emptying that is the one which all the spaces and internal components of the combine are filled or deflated by the grains mass occurred in each input and output of the combine. In this process were eliminated 5,69% of the total points, being the process more efficient in the elimination of points, because it acts mainly in the plot s heads, where the most errors occurs. For the width error of platform were eliminated only 0,09% of the points of data. At the points having sign fails of GPS differential correction, in average 2,04% were eliminated. In the filtering of data, in average 2,27 % of the points were eliminated. In localization errors, all the points having until one meter of distance were removed, eliminating in average 0,14% of the data. At the end of the filtering process, the subsequent phase was the determination of the correct delay time for the variables humid productivity, humidity and elevation. As the delay time is directly linked with the combine speed inside the transport, areas with homogeneous speed were considerated. Each one of the 12 sub- areas from 10 data sets were submitted to the process of analysis of spatial dependence of the better semivariogram´s adjust. The trend more emphasized in the tabulation of the semivariogram parameters is the linearity of the nugget effect for the factor elevation, originating from own absence of the delay time of this data, since the elevation is passed joinly to the geodetic coordinates by DGPS, for the harvest monitor. The determination method of the delay time and the filtering process were satisfactory, meanly for humid productivity and humidity, despite of the high natural data variability. / A colheita monitorada é feita de vários processos, e nesses, podem ocorrer erros, por isso, uma metodologia de filtragem de dados torna-se necessária para obtenção de mapas confiáveis e ela gira em torno do principal fator de erro, que é o tempo de atraso. O tempo de atraso é aquele despendido entre o corte da planta na barra de corte da plataforma e a passagem do grão pelo sensor de produtividade e umidade. Para determinação destes erros, um conjunto de dados foi analisado com 10 tempos de atraso diferentes, sendo de zero a 27 segundos, com um intervalo de 3 segundos. A filtragem começa pela determinação do tempo de enchimento e esvaziamento, que é o tempo em que todos os espaços e componentes internos da colhedora são preenchidos, ou esvaziados, pela massa de grãos, ocorrida em cada entrada e saída da colhedora. Neste processo foram eliminados 5,69% dos pontos totais, sendo o processo que mais eliminou pontos, pois, atuou principalmente nas cabeceiras do talhão, onde ocorreu a maioria dos erros. Para o erro de largura de plataforma foram eliminados apenas 0,09% dos pontos de dados. Nos pontos com falha do sinal de correção diferencial do GPS, foram eliminados em média 2,04%. Na filtragem de dados de umidade, foram eliminados em média 2,27% dos pontos. Em erros de localização, foram removidos todos os pontos com até um metro de distância, eliminando em média 0,14% dos dados. Ao término do processo de filtragem, a etapa subseqüente foi à determinação do correto tempo de atraso para as variáveis produtividade úmida, umidade e altitude. Consideraram-se 12 zonas com velocidades de deslocamento homogêneas. Cada uma das 12 zonas dos 10 conjuntos de dados foram submetidas ao processo de análise de dependência espacial. O resultado mais marcante na analise espacial dos dados é a linearidade dos efeitos pepita para o fator elevação, proveniente da própria falta do tempo de atraso destes dados, já que a elevação é transmitida juntamente com as coordenadas geodésicas pelo DGPS, para o monitor de produtividade. O método de determinação dos tempos de atraso e o processo de filtragem foram satisfatórios, principalmente para produtividade úmida e umidade, apesar da alta variabilidade natural dos dados.

The purpose of this study was to implement pivotal response training (PRT) strategies paired with constant time delay (CTD) to teach an individual with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and intellectual disability (ID) to self-initiate through question asking. A multiple probe across behaviors design was used to evaluate effectiveness of implementation. Results show that this naturalistic intervention is effective for some questions, while other questions need to be taught in more contrived scenarios.

La thèse a pour sujet les propriétés spectrales et les propriétés de propagation<br /> d'hamiltoniens décrivant certains systèmes quantiques. La première partie donne<br /> une description des propriétés spectrales d'une particule quantique évoluant dans un<br /> nanotube courbe asymptotiquement droit. La deuxième partie est consacrée à l'analyse<br /> de la stabilité des propriétés spectrales de certains opérateurs de Dirac magnétiques<br /> sous l'effet de perturbations dues à l'ajout d'un potentiel matriciel. La troisième<br /> partie est une étude consacrée à la notion de temps de retard accumulé par une<br /> particule expérimentant une diffusion dans un guide d'ondes.

True time delay networks are one of the most critical structures of wideband phased-array antenna systems which are frequently used in self-protection and electronic warfare applications. In order to direct the main beam of a wideband phased-array antenna to the desired direction / phase values, which are linearly dependent to frequency, are essential. Due to the phase characteristics of the true-time delay networks, beam squint problems for broadband phased array systems are minimized. In this thesis, different types of true-time delay structures are investigated for wideband phased array applications and a tunable S-band true-time delay network having delay over 1ns with high resolution is developed, designed, fabricated and measured. Lower-cost, smaller occupied area, digital/analog control mechanism and ease of implementation are the other features of the developed network. High delay values with high resolutions for wideband operation are achieved through the combination of several techniques / therefore the desired S-band TTD network is constructed with the synthesis of switched-transmission lines, constant-R networks and periodically-loaded transmission lines. Higher delay states are realized by the switched-transmission lines technique, while the method of constant R-network is used for the intermediate delay states. To increase the tuning flexibility, smaller delay states are accomplished by analog-voltage controlled periodically loaded transmission lines. A step-by-step procedure is followed during the design process of the S-band true time delay network. Firstly, each method used in the TTD network is analyzed in detail and developed for PCB implementation and the use of COTS components. Then, the designed structures are verified via linear and EM simulations performed by ADS2011&reg / . After that, the effects of production tolerances are examined to optimize each design for S-band operations. Moreover, the designed structures are fabricated by using PCB technology and measured. Finally, a software code is developed in MATLAB to generate the overall cascaded network with the help of measured data.

<p>This thesis addresses the problem of source localization and time-varying spatial spectrum estimation with maneuverable arrays. Two applications, each having different environmental assumptions and array geometries, are considered: 1) passive broadband source localization with a rigid 2-sensor array in a shallow water, multipath environment and 2) time-varying spatial spectrum estimation with a large, flexible towed array. Although both applications differ, the processing scheme associated with each is designed to exploit array maneuverability for improved localization and detection performance.</p><p>In the first application considered, passive broadband source localization is accomplished via time delay estimation (TDE). Conventional TDE methods, such as the generalized cross-correlation (GCC) method, make the assumption of a direct-path signal model and thus suffer localization performance loss in shallow water, multipath environments. Correlated multipath returns can result in spurious peaks in GCC outputs resulting in large bearing estimate errors. A new algorithm that exploits array maneuverability is presented here. The multiple orientation geometric averaging (MOGA) technique geometrically averages cross-correlation outputs to obtain a multipath-robust TDE. A broadband multipath simulation is presented and results indicate that the MOGA effectively suppresses correlated multipath returns in the TDE.</p><p>The second application addresses the problem of field directionality mapping (FDM) or spatial spectrum estimation in dynamic environments with a maneuverable towed acoustic array. Array processing algorithms for towed arrays are typically designed assuming the array is straight, and are thus degraded during tow ship maneuvers. In this thesis, maneuvering the array is treated as a feature allowing for left and right disambiguation as well as improved resolution towards endfire. The Cramer Rao lower bound is used to motivate the improvement in source localization which can be theoretically achieved by exploiting array maneuverability. Two methods for estimating time-varying field directionality with a maneuvering array are presented: 1) maximum likelihood estimation solved using the expectation maximization (EM) algorithm and 2) a non-negative least squares (NNLS) approach. The NNLS method is designed to compute the field directionality from beamformed power outputs, while the ML algorithm uses raw sensor data. A multi-source simulation is used to illustrate both the proposed algorithms' ability to suppress ambiguous towed-array backlobes and resolve closely spaced interferers near endfire which pose challenges for conventional beamforming approaches especially during array maneuvers. Receiver operating characteristics (ROCs) are presented to evaluate the algorithms' detection performance versus SNR. Results indicate that both FDM algorithms offer the potential to provide superior detection performance in the presence of noise and interfering backlobes when compared to conventional beamforming with a maneuverable array.</p> / Dissertation