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Incorporating driver behavior information into vehicle control strategies can significantly improve performance of vehicle control systems, such as active safety systems and driver assistance systems. This paper proposes an algorithm for driver behavior characterization based on handling limits. In order to implement the handling limit-based algorithm, an interacting multiple model estimation technique...
Because both drivers and passengers may have different time constraints and preferences for carpooling, it is hard to manually find the best carpooling match, i.e., the lowest fuel-cost route, between them in the traditional carpooling web site. With the help of real-time traffic information exchanged among nearby vehicles through the vehicular ad-hoc network (VANET), this paper proposes the dynamic...
Path tracking control for autonomous vehicle using model predictive control (MPC) algorithm maintains maneuverability by calculating a sequence of control input which minimizes a tracking error. The weakness of this method is that the performance of MPC may decrease significantly when the priori prediction model is not accurate. Therefore, it is important to keep the vehicle stable when MPC having...
In many cases, solving optimisation problems, in particular a dynamic optimisation problem, is time-consuming. This is due to the long time of calculation of the objective function value. For example, during optimisation of the articulated vehicle it is necessary to integrate dynamic equations of motion in the whole time interval. The paper presents an application of own algorithm (EVCA) for reduction...
A smart city is emerging as an application of information and communication technologies to mitigate the problems generated by the urban population growth. One of the smart city solutions is to establish an efficient fleet management relating to the use of a fleet of vehicles (e.g., ambulances and police vehicles). The most basic function in a fleet management system is the real time vehicle tracking...
We collaborated with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) to improve the depth control algorithm used by the Dorado class autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) in conducting bathymetric surveys and other remote sensing tasks. The algorithm enables better bottom following by planning for the depth profile that follows the desired depth best, while pulling up safely for bathymetry. The...
This paper describes the Unmanned Underwater Vehicle (UUV) Simulator, an extension of the open-source robotics simulator Gazebo to underwater scenarios, that can simulate multiple underwater robots and intervention tasks using robotic manipulators. This is achieved mainly through a set of newly implemented plugins that model underwater hydrostatic and hydrodynamic effects, thrusters, sensors, and...
We detail the development of a novel propulsion system for unmanned underwater vehicles (UUV's) inspired by the punting locomotion of the ‘Little Skate’. The hybrid legged, gliding and punting gait is a potential enabling technology for UUV access to complex littoral environments. Design, development and initial trials with the prototype vehicle are presented. A combination of video motion capture...
This paper proposes a docking maneuver for an underactuated autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) to dock into a funnel shaped docking station. The novelty of the proposed approach is enabling an underactuated AUV that is unable to control its sway motion, to dock with no crab angle, in the presence of cross-currents. Docking without a crab angle can be beneficial in cases where the geometry of the...
Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) are commonly used in oceanographic applications such as seafloor survey and underwater iceberg profiling. During the surveys, the vehicles are intended to follow the variation of the seafloor or iceberg surface at a constant stand-off distance in order to maintain a consistent sensor footprint. Mechanical scanning sonar are usually chosen for measuring the distance...
Underwater Object Localization is widely used in the industry in Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV), both in sea and lake environments for various applications. Sonars and Cameras are popular choices for this, but each sensor alone poses several problems. Data extraction from Optical Cameras underwater is a challenge due to poor lighting conditions, hazing over large distances and spatio-temporal...
Controlled Lagrangian particle tracking (CLPT) is a feedback control methodology for autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) in dynamic ocean environments that can reveal information about ocean flow and model error through the operation of AUVs. From CLPT, we evaluate the navigational performance of AUVs with controlled Lagrangian prediction error (CLPE), which represents the difference between the...
This paper presents a cooperative, distance-based, distributed control law for multiple Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) executing a mission while meeting mutual communications constraints. The classic graph theory provides the essential tools to model the whole network of interacting robots, which is then handled within the energy-based, port-Hamiltonian framework. The virtual interaction forces...
This paper presents a hybrid visual servo controller for underwater vehicles by exploiting a combination of measured Euclidean information and image information of a single feature. A dynamic inversion-based neural network control scheme is proposed for tracking of the reference trajectory generated from a constant target pose. A single-hidden-layer (SHL) feedforward neural network, in conjunction...
This paper discusses the application of ‘optimal search,’ an optimization framework developed by the US Navy to optimize sonar-based search and rescue operations, to marine mapping tasks. In contrast to path planning methods which focus on maximizing area coverage, optimal search seeks to directly optimize expected sensor performance over a region, through consideration of vehicle dynamics, sensor...
An Unscented Kalman Filter (UKF) to simultaneously estimate the navigation state of an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) and the sea current, a priori unknown, is proposed. The filter is the result of a modification of an UKF developed in the past by the authors for the sole purpose of navigation state estimation. The new algorithm has been obtained by integrating the vehicle model with a contribution...
In this paper, we study a formation control scheme that achieves a tight formation in a 1D platoon. The scheme achieves constant inter-vehicle spacings (with no transient) for almost every vehicle pair whenever there are no disturbances. We build up from the basic leader following approach with a modification in the weight selection. In particular, each member tracks the movement of its immediate...
Non-linear lateral stability of a vehicle is considered. The region of attraction is estimated using Sum of Squares (SOS) programming and compared to previous results from the literature. Parametric studies are then carried out to analyse their influence on the stability region. The vehicle in both cornering and straight line motion is considered.
This article describes a methodology for structured H-infinity synthesis that reconciles classical and robust control concepts. The aim is to provide a transparent and methodological process to tune the weights used in the structured synthesis. The process is exemplified on a simplified model for the atmospheric ascent-flight control system for the VEGA launch vehicle. The results show that the same...
This paper considers the design and implementation of a discrete-time fast tracking controller for quadrotor vehicles subject to perturbations. The proposed controller consists of a model-based disturbance observer and a Composite Nonlinear Feedback (CNF) controller. The CNF control law introduces nonlinear damping to the system so that it possesses a fast rise time without overshoot. The least square...
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