Volumen 28 (2018): Heft 3 (September 2018)

We analyze quadratic performance for switched systems which are composed of a finite set of affine time-varying subsystems, where both subsystem matrices and affine vectors are switched, and no single subsystem has desired quadratic performance. The quadratic performance indexes we deal with include stability, tracking and L₂ gain. We show that if a linear convex combination of subsystem matrices is uniformly Hurwitz and another convex combination of affine vectors is zero, then we can design a state-dependent switching law (state feedback) and an output-dependent switching law (output feedback) such that the entire switched affine system is quadratically stable at the origin. In the case where the convex combination of affine vectors is nonzero, we show that the tracking control problem can be posed and solved using a similar switching strategy. Finally, we consider the L₂gain analysis problem for the switched affine time-varying systems under state feedback.

This paper is concerned with robust stabilization of continuous linear positive time-delay systems with parametric uncertainties. The delay considered in this work is a bounded time-varying function. Previously, we have demonstrated that the equidistant delay-decomposition technique is less conservative when it is applied to linear positive time-delay systems. Thus, we use simply a delay bi-decomposition in an appropriate Lyapunov-Krasovskii functional. By using classical and partitioned control gains, the state-feedback controllers developed in our work are formulated in terms of linear matrix inequalities. The efficiency of the proposed robust control laws is illustrated with via an example.

The aim of this work is to show that interval positive fractional discrete-time linear systems are asymptotically stable if and only if the respective lower and upper bound systems are asymptotically stable. The classical Kharitonov theorem is extended to interval positive fractional linear systems.

This paper presents a novel approach to the design of fuzzy state feedback controllers for continuous-time non-linear systems with input saturation under persistent perturbations. It is assumed that all the states of the Takagi-Sugeno (TS) fuzzy model representing a non-linear system are measurable. Such controllers achieve bounded input bounded output (BIBO) stabilisation in closed loop based on the computation of inescapable ellipsoids. These ellipsoids are computed with linear matrix inequalities (LMIs) that guarantee stabilisation with input saturation and persistent perturbations. In particular, two kinds of inescapable ellipsoids are computed when solving a multiobjective optimization problem: the maximum volume inescapable ellipsoids contained inside the validity domain of the TS fuzzy model and the smallest inescapable ellipsoids which guarantee a minimum _*-norm (upper bound of the 1-norm) of the perturbed system. For every initial point contained in the maximum volume ellipsoid, the closed loop will enter the minimum _*-norm ellipsoid after a finite time, and it will remain inside afterwards. Consequently, the designed controllers have a large domain of validity and ensure a small value for the 1-norm of closed loop.

State estimation of stochastic discrete-time linear systems subject to unknown inputs has been widely studied, but few works take into account disturbances switching between unknown inputs and constant biases. We show that such disturbances affect a networked control system subject to deception attacks on the control signals transmitted by the controller to the plant via unreliable networks. This paper proposes to estimate the switching disturbance from an augmented state version of the intermittent unknown input Kalman filter. The sufficient stochastic stability conditions of the obtained filter are established when the arrival binary sequence of data losses follows a Bernoulli random process.

A repeatable inverse kinematic task in robot manipulators consists in finding a loop (cyclic trajectory) in a configuration space, which corresponds to a given loop in a task space. In the robotic literature, an entry configuration to the trajectory is fixed and given by a user. In this paper the assumption is released and a new, indirect method is introduced to find entry configurations generating short trajectories. The method avoids a computationally expensive evaluation of (infinite) many entry configurations for redundant manipulators (for each of them, repeatable inverse kinematics should be run). Some fast-to-compute functions are proposed to evaluate entry configurations and their correlations with resulting lengths of trajectories are computed. It appears that only an original function, based on characteristics of a manipulability subellipsoid, properly distinguishes entry configurations that generate short trajectories. This function can be used either to choose one from a few possible entry configurations or as an optimized function to compute the best initial configuration.

A novel, exact algorithm is presented to solve the path planning problem that involves finding the shortest collision-free path from a start to a goal point in a two-dimensional environment containing convex and non-convex obstacles. The proposed algorithm, which is called the shortest possible path (SPP) algorithm, constructs a network of lines connecting the vertices of the obstacles and the locations of the start and goal points which is smaller than the network generated by the visibility graph. Then it finds the shortest path from start to goal point within this network. The SPP algorithm generates a safe, smooth and obstacle-free path that has a desired distance from each obstacle. This algorithm is designed for environments that are populated sparsely with convex and nonconvex polygonal obstacles. It has the capability of eliminating some of the polygons that do not play any role in constructing the optimal path. It is proven that the SPP algorithm can find the optimal path in O(nn^r2) time, where n is the number of vertices of all polygons and n ̓ is the number of vertices that are considered in constructing the path network (n ̓ ≤ n). The performance of the algorithm is evaluated relative to three major classes of algorithms: heuristic, probabilistic, and classic. Different benchmark scenarios are used to evaluate the performance of the algorithm relative to the first two classes of algorithms: GAMOPP (genetic algorithm for multi-objective path planning), a representative heuristic algorithm, as well as RRT (rapidly-exploring random tree) and PRM (probabilistic road map), two well-known probabilistic algorithms. Time complexity is known for classic algorithms, so the presented algorithm is compared analytically.

Inspired by ant foraging, as well as modeling of the feature map and measurements as random finite sets, a novel formulation in an ant colony framework is proposed to jointly estimate the map and the vehicle trajectory so as to solve a feature-based simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) problem. This so-called ant-PHD-SLAM algorithm allows decomposing the recursion for the joint map-trajectory posterior density into a jointly propagated posterior density of the vehicle trajectory and the posterior density of the feature map conditioned on the vehicle trajectory. More specifically, an ant-PHD filter is proposed to jointly estimate the number of map features and their locations, namely, using the powerful search ability and collective cooperation of ants to complete the PHD-SLAM filter time prediction and data update process. Meanwhile, a novel fast moving ant estimator (F-MAE) is utilized to estimate the maneuvering vehicle trajectory. Evaluation and comparison using several numerical examples show a performance improvement over recently reported approaches. Moreover, the experimental results based on the robot operation system (ROS) platform validate the consistency with the results obtained from numerical simulations.

The fusion under unknown correlations tunes a combination of local estimates in such a way that upper bounds of the admissible mean square error matrices are optimised. Based on the recently discovered relation between the admissible matrices and Minkowski sums of ellipsoids, the optimality of existing algorithms is analysed. Simple examples are used to indicate the reasons for the suboptimality of the covariance intersection fusion of multiple estimates. Further, an extension of the existing family of upper bounds is proposed, which makes it possible to get closer to the optimum, and a general case is discussed. All results are obtained analytically and illustrated graphically.

We define games on the medium of plasmodia of slime mould, unicellular organisms that look like giant amoebae. The plasmodia try to occupy all the food pieces they can detect. Thus, two different plasmodia can compete with each other. In particular, we consider game-theoretically how plasmodia of Physarum polycephalum and Badhamia utricularis fight for food. Placing food pieces at different locations determines the behavior of plasmodia. In this way, we can program the plasmodia of Physarum polycephalum and Badhamia utricularis by placing food, and we can examine their motion as a Physarum machine-an abstract machine where states are represented as food pieces and transitions among states are represented as movements of plasmodia from one piece to another. Hence, this machine is treated as a natural transition system. The behavior of the Physarum machine in the form of a transition system can be interpreted in terms of rough set theory that enables modeling some ambiguities in motions of plasmodia. The problem is that there is always an ambiguity which direction of plasmodium propagation is currently chosen: one or several concurrent ones, i.e., whether we deal with a sequential, concurrent or massively parallel motion. We propose to manage this ambiguity using rough set theory. Firstly, we define the region of plasmodium interest as a rough set; secondly, we consider concurrent transitions determined by these regions as a context-based game; thirdly, we define strategies in this game as a rough set; fourthly, we show how these results can be interpreted as a Go game.

This paper introduces a method of data clustering that is based on linguistically specified rules, similar to those applied by a human visually fulfilling a task. The method endeavors to follow these remarkable capabilities of intelligent beings. Even for most complicated data patterns a human is capable of accomplishing the clustering process using relatively simple rules. His/her way of clustering is a sequential search for new structures in the data and new prototypes with the use of the following linguistic rule: search for prototypes in regions of extremely high data densities and immensely far from the previously found ones. Then, after this search has been completed, the respective data have to be assigned to any of the clusters whose nuclei (prototypes) have been found. A human again uses a simple linguistic rule: data from regions with similar densities, which are located exceedingly close to each other, should belong to the same cluster. The goal of this work is to prove experimentally that such simple linguistic rules can result in a clustering method that is competitive with the most effective methods known from the literature on the subject. A linguistic formulation of a validity index for determination of the number of clusters is also presented. Finally, an extensive experimental analysis of benchmark datasets is performed to demonstrate the validity of the clustering approach introduced. Its competitiveness with the state-of-the-art solutions is also shown.

Two types of heuristic estimators based on Parzen kernels are presented. They are able to estimate the regression function in an incremental manner. The estimators apply two techniques commonly used in concept-drifting data streams, i.e., the forgetting factor and the sliding window. The methods are applicable for models in which both the function and the noise variance change over time. Although nonparametric methods based on Parzen kernels were previously successfully applied in the literature to online regression function estimation, the problem of estimating the variance of noise was generally neglected. It is sometimes of profound interest to know the variance of the signal considered, e.g., in economics, but it can also be used for determining confidence intervals in the estimation of the regression function, as well as while evaluating the goodness of fit and in controlling the amount of smoothing. The present paper addresses this issue. Specifically, variance estimators are proposed which are able to deal with concept drifting data by applying a sliding window and a forgetting factor, respectively. A number of conducted numerical experiments proved that the proposed methods perform satisfactorily well in estimating both the regression function and the variance of the noise.

This paper describes application of a hyper-graph grammar system for modeling a three-dimensional adaptive finite element method. The hyper-graph grammar approach allows obtaining a linear computational cost of adaptive mesh transformations and computations performed over refined meshes. The computations are done by a hyper-graph grammar driven algorithm applicable to three-dimensional problems. For the case of typical refinements performed towards a point or an edge, the algorithm yields linear computational cost with respect to the mesh nodes for its sequential execution and logarithmic cost for its parallel execution. Such hyper-graph grammar productions are the mathematical formalism used to describe the computational algorithm implementing the finite element method. Each production indicates the smallest atomic task that can be executed concurrently. The mesh transformations and computations by using the hyper-graph grammar-based approach have been tested in the GALOIS environment. We conclude the paper with some numerical results performed on a shared-memory Linux cluster node, for the case of three-dimensional computational meshes refined towards a point, an edge and a face.

We investigate Ore polynomial matrices, i. e., matrices with polynomial entries in d/dt whose coefficients are meromorphic functions in t and as such constitute a non-commutative ring. In particular, we study the properties of hyper-regularity and unimodularity of such matrices and derive conditions which make it possible to efficiently check for these characteristics. In addition, this approach enables computation of hyper-regular left and right and unimodular inverses.

A method is proposed targeting a decrease in the number of LUTs in circuits of FPGA-based Mealy FSMs. The method improves hardware consumption for Mealy FSMs with the encoding of collections of output variables. The approach is based on constructing a partition for the set of internal states. Each state has two codes. It diminishes the number of arguments in input memory functions. An example of synthesis is given, along with results of investigations. The method targets rather complex FSMs, having more than 15 states.