Whereas fault diagnosis has been the subject of intensive research since the 1970s, the design of fault tolerant systems is a recent research field which does not set its foundations in a unified framework and does not use a unified vocabulary. As a contribution to this special issue, this paper proposes an ontology for the problem of Fault Handling, that embeds the problem of Fault Tolerance.

Reaching fault tolerance in technological systems requires to detect malfunctions. This paper presents a diagnostic method that is robust with respect to unknown-but-bounded uncertainties of the dynamical model and the measurements. By using models of the faultless and the faulty behaviours, a state-set observer computes polyhedral sets from which the consistency of the models with the interval measurements is determined. The diagnostic result is proven to be complete, i.e., the set of faults obtained by the diagnostic algorithm includes the actual fault. The algorithm is illustrated by an application example.

This paper studies the problem of fault estimation using adaptive fault diagnosis observer. A fast adaptive fault estimation (FAFE) approximator is proposed to improve the rapidity of fault estimation. Then based on linear matrix inequality (LMI) technique, a feasible algorithm is explored to solve the designed parameters. Furthermore, an extension to sensor fault case is investigated. Finally, simulation results are presented to illustrate the efficiency of the proposed FAFE methodology.

A fault tolerant control system design technique has been proposed and analyzed for managing performance degradation in the presence of multiple faults in actuators. The method is based on a control structure with a model reference reconfigurable control design in an inner loop and command input adjustment in an outer loop. The reduced dynamic performance requirements in the presence of different actuator faults are accounted for through different performance reduced (degraded) reference models. The degraded steady-state performances are governed by the reduced levels of command input. The reconfigurable controller is designed on-line automatically in an explicit model reference control framework so that the dynamics of the closed-loop system follow that of the performance reduced reference model under each fault condition. The reduced command input level is determined to prevent potential actuator saturation. The proposed method has been evaluated and analyzed using an aircraft example against actuator faults subject to constraints on the magnitude and slew-rate of actuators.

A general active fault-tolerant control framework is proposed for nonlinear systems with sensor faults. According to their identifiability, all sensor faults are divided into two classes: identifiable faults and non-identifiable faults. In the healthy case, the control objective is such that all outputs converge to their given set-points. A fault detection and isolation module is firstly built, which can produce an alarm when there is a fault in the system and also tell us which sensor has a fault. If the fault is identifiable, the control objective remains the same as in the healthy case; while if the fault is non-identifiable, the control objective degenerates to be such that only the healthy outputs converge to the set-points. A numerical example is given to illustrate the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed method and encouraging results have been obtained.

This paper is concerned with tasking and guidance of networked airborne sensors to achieve fault-tolerant sensing. The sensors are coordinated to locate hostile transmitters by intercepting and processing their signals. Faults occur when some sensor-carrying vehicles engaged in target location missions are lost. Faults effectively change the network architecture and therefore degrade the network performance. The first objective of the paper is to optimally allocate a finite number of sensors to targets to maximize the network life and availability. To that end allocation policies are solved from relevant Markov decision problems. The sensors allocated to a target must continue to adjust their trajectories until the estimate of the target location reaches a prescribed accuracy. The second objective of the paper is to establish a criterion for vehicle guidance for which fault-tolerant sensing is achieved by incorporating the knowledge of vehicle loss probability, and by allowing network reconfiguration in the event of loss of vehicles. Superior sensing performance in terms of location accuracy is demonstrated under the established criterion.

Due to the difficulty in solving the Hamilton-Jacobi-Isaacs equation, the nonlinear optimal control approach is not very practical in general. To overcome this problem, Ezal et al. (2000) first solved a linear optimal control problem for the linearized model of a nonlinear system given in the strict-feedback form. Then, using the backstepping procedure, a nonlinear feedback controller was designed where the linear part is same as the linear feedback obtained from the linear optimal control design. However, their construction is based on the cancellation of the high order nonlinearity, which limits the application to the smooth ($C^{\infty}$) vector fields. In this paper, we develop an alternative method for backstepping procedure, so that the vector field can be just $C^1$, which allows this approach to be applicable to much larger class of nonlinear systems.

This paper aims to present a polynomial approach to the steady-state optimal filtering for delayed systems. The design of the steady-state filter involves solving one polynomial equation and one spectral factorization. The key problem in this paper is the derivation of spectral factorization for systems with delayed measurement, which is more difficult than the standard systems without delays. To get the spectral factorization, we apply the reorganized innovation approach. The calculation of spectral factorization comes down to two Riccati equations with the same dimension as the original systems.

A position control method for interpolating aspherical grinding and polishing tool path was reviewed and experimented in a nano precision machine. The position-base algorithm was reformed from the time-base algorithm, proposed in the previous study. The characteristics of the algorithm were in the velocity control loop with position feedback. The aspherical surface was divided by an interval at which each velocity and acceleration were calculated. The theoretical velocity was corrected by position error during processing. In the experiment, a machine was constructed and nano-scale linear encoders were installed at each axis. Relation between process parameters and the variation of position error was monitored and discussed. The best result from optimized parameters showed that the accuracy was 150nm and improved from the previous report.

A known nonlinear compensator design approach is adapted to allow design of nonlinear lead and/or lag compensators, and a number of MATLAB functions are developed that automate the compensator design procedure. With this design tool, control engineers would be able to rapidly design nonlinear lead and/or lag compensators. An example of a tutorial nature is presented.

This paper discusses a design methodology of cooperative path planning for dynamical multi-agent systems with spatial and temporal constraints. The cooperative behavior of the multi-agent systems is specified in terms of the objective function in an optimization formulation. The path of achieving cooperative tasks is then generated by the optimization formulation constructed based on a differential flatness approach. Three scenarios of multi-agent tasking are proposed at the cooperative task planning framework. Given agent dynamics, both spatial and temporal constraints are considered in the path planning. The path planning algorithm first finds trajectory curves in a lower-dimensional space and then parameterizes the curves by a set of B-spline representations. The coefficients of the B-spline curves are further solved by a sequential quadratic programming solver to achieve the optimization objective and satisfy these constraints. Finally, several illustrative examples of cooperative path/task planning are presented.

The template matching method is used as a simple method to track objects or patterns that we want to search for in the input image data from image sensors. It recognizes a segment with the highest correlation as a target. The concept of this method is similar to that of SNF (Strongest Neighbor Filter) that regards the measurement with the highest signal intensity as target-originated among other measurements. The SNF assumes that the strongest neighbor (SN) measurement in the validation gate originates from the target of interest and the SNF utilizes the SN in the update step of a standard Kalman filter (SKF). The SNF is widely used along with the nearest neighbor filter (NNF), due to computational simplicity in spite of its inconsistency of handling the SN as if it is the true target. Probabilistic Strongest Neighbor Filter for m validated measurements (PSNF-m) accounts for the probability that the SN in the validation gate originates from the target while the SNF assumes at any time that the SN measurement is target-originated. It is known that the PSNF-m is superior to the SNF in performance at a cost of increased computational load. In this paper, we suggest an image tracking algorithm that combines the template matching and the PSNF-m to estimate the states of a tracked target. Computer simulation results are included to demonstrate the performance of the proposed algorithm in comparison with other algorithms.

An ownship with towed array sonar (TAS) has limited maneuvers due to its dynamic feature, bearing and frequency measurements of a target which are not detected continuously but are often lost in ocean environment. We propose a pre-processing algorithm for the faded bearing and frequency measurements to solve the BFTMA problem of TAS under limited detection conditions. The proposed pre-processing algorithm to restore the faded bearing and frequency measurements is implemented to perform a BFTMA filter even if the measurements of a target are not continuously detected. The Modified Gain Extended Kalman Filter (MGEKF) method based on the Interacting Multiple Model (IMM) structure is applied for a BFTMA filter algorithm to estimate the target. Simulations for the various conditions were carried out to verify the applicability of the proposed algorithms, and confirmed superior estimation performance compared with the existing Bearings-Only TMA (BOTMA).

This paper develops a novel automatic parking algorithm based on a fuzzy logic controller with the vehicle pose for the input and the steering rate for the output. It localizes the vehicle by using only external sensors - a vision sensor and ultrasonic sensors. Then it automatically learns an optimal fuzzy if-then rule set from the training data, using an evolutionary fuzzy system. Furthermore, it also finds the green zone for the ready-to-reverse position in which parking is possible just by reversing. It has been tested on a 4-wheeled Pioneer mobile robot which emulates the real vehicle.

We propose an intelligent predictive control approach for a nonlinear networked control system (NCS) with time-varying delay and random observation. The control is given by the sum of a nominal control and a corrective control. The nominal control is determined analytically using a linearized system model with fixed time delay. The corrective control is generated online by a neural network optimizer. A Markov chain (MC) dynamic Bayesian network (DBN) predicts the dynamics of the stochastic system online to allow predictive control design. We apply our proposed method to a satellite attitude control system and evaluate its control performance through computer simulation.

The neural network is currently being used throughout numerous control system fields. However, it is not easy to obtain an input-output pattern when the neural network is used for the system of a single feedback controller and it is difficult to obtain satisfactory performance with when the load changes rapidly or disturbance is applied. To resolve these problems, this paper proposes a new mode to implement a neural network controller by installing a real object for control and an algorithm for this, which can replace the existing method of implementing a neural network controller by utilizing activation function at the output node. The real plant object for controlling of this mode implements a simple neural network controller replacing the activation function and provides the error back propagation path to calculate the error at the output node. As the controller is designed using a simple structure neural network, the input-output pattern problem is solved naturally and real-time learning becomes possible through the general error back propagation algorithm. The new algorithm applied neural network controller gives excellent performance for initial and tracking response and shows a robust performance for rapid load change and disturbance, in which the permissible error surpasses the range border. The effect of the proposed control algorithm was verified in a test that controlled the speed of a motor equipped with a high speed computing capable DSP on which the proposed algorithm was loaded.

This paper deals with the stability analysis of a missile guidance loop employing an integrated proportional navigation guidance law. The missile guidance loop is formulated as a closed-loop control system consisting of a linear time-invariant feed-forward block and a time-varying feedback gain. Based on the circle criterion, we have defined the concept of absolute stability margins and obtained the gain and phase margins for the system assuming 1 st order missile/autopilot dynamics. The correlation between the absolute stability margins and the margins derived from the frozen system analysis is also discussed.