Annual Reviews in Control最新文献

In this survey, we review the recent advances in control design methods for robotic multi-agent systems (MAS), focusing on learning-based methods with safety considerations. We start by reviewing various notions of safety and liveness properties, and modeling frameworks used for problem formulation of MAS. Then we provide a comprehensive review of learning-based methods for safe control design for multi-robot systems. We start with various shielding-based methods, such as safety certificates, predictive filters, and reachability tools. Then, we review the current state of control barrier certificate learning in both a centralized and distributed manner, followed by a comprehensive review of multi-agent reinforcement learning with a particular focus on safety. Next, we discuss the state-of-the-art verification tools for the correctness of learning-based methods. Based on the capabilities and the limitations of the state-of-the-art methods in learning and verification for MAS, we identify various broad themes for open challenges: how to design methods that can achieve good performance along with safety guarantees; how to decompose single-agent-based centralized methods for MAS; how to account for communication-related practical issues; and how to assess transfer of theoretical guarantees to practice.

This paper provides an extensive literature review focusing on the modeling of artificial pacemakers and the various mechanisms employed for their pacing control. In this survey, we initially gone through the fundamental concept of artificial pacemakers. Subsequently, we expound on their modeling techniques. Additionally, we furnish a holistic overview of diverse control methodologies tailored for the continuous pace tracking and control of pacemaker signals. Our discussion extensively reviews and scrutinizes various control algorithms and deployment approaches. Moreover, we spotlight the application of the IMP-based Repetitive Control (RC) technique for ensuring uninterrupted pace tracking in pacemakers. Conclusively, we address the spectrum of research challenges inherent in controller design advancements, underscoring the journey towards achieving precise and accurate pace control in pacemakers.

Mathematical optimization is one of the cornerstones of modern engineering research and practice. Yet, throughout all application domains, mathematical optimization is, for the most part, considered to be a numerical discipline. Optimization problems are formulated to be solved numerically with specific algorithms running on microprocessors. An emerging alternative is to view optimization algorithms as dynamical systems. Besides being insightful in itself, this perspective liberates optimization methods from specific numerical and algorithmic aspects and opens up new possibilities to endow complex real-world systems with sophisticated self-optimizing behavior. Towards this goal, it is necessary to understand how numerical optimization algorithms can be converted into feedback controllers to enable robust “closed-loop optimization”. In this article, we focus on recent control designs under the name of “feedback-based optimization” which implement optimization algorithms directly in closed loop with physical systems. In addition to a brief overview of selected continuous-time dynamical systems for optimization, our particular emphasis in this survey lies on closed-loop stability as well as the robust enforcement of physical and operational constraints in closed-loop implementations. To bypass accessing partial model information of physical systems, we further elaborate on fully data-driven and model-free operations. We highlight an emerging application in autonomous reserve dispatch in power systems, where the theory has transitioned to practice by now. We also provide short expository reviews of pioneering applications in communication networks and electricity grids, as well as related research streams, including extremum seeking and pertinent methods from model predictive and process control, to facilitate high-level comparisons with the main topic of this survey.

A broad-deep fusion network-based fuzzy emotional inference model with personal information (BDFEI) is proposed for emotional intention understanding in human–robot interaction. It aims to understand students’ intentions in the university teaching scene. Initially, we employ convolution and maximum pooling for feature extraction. Subsequently, we apply the ridge regression algorithm for emotional behavior recognition, which effectively mitigates the impact of complex network structures and slow network updates often associated with deep learning. Moreover, we utilize multivariate analysis of variance to identify the key personal information factors influencing intentions and calculate their influence coefficients. Finally, a fuzzy inference method is employed to gain a comprehensive understanding of intentions. Our experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the BDFEI model. When compared to existing models, namely FDNNSA, ResNet-101+GFK, and HCFS, the BDFEI model achieved superior accuracy on the FABO database, surpassing them by 12.21%, 1.89%, and 0.78%, respectively. Furthermore, our self-built database experiments yielded an impressive 82.00% accuracy in intention understanding, confirming the efficacy of our emotional intention inference model.

This paper presents a tutorial overview of path integral (PI) approaches for stochastic optimal control and trajectory optimization. We concisely summarize the theoretical development of path integral control to compute a solution for stochastic optimal control and provide algorithmic descriptions of the cross-entropy (CE) method, an open-loop controller using the receding horizon scheme known as the model predictive path integral (MPPI), and a parameterized state feedback controller based on the path integral control theory. We discuss policy search methods based on path integral control, efficient and stable sampling strategies, extensions to multi-agent decision-making, and MPPI for the trajectory optimization on manifolds. For tutorial demonstrations, some PI-based controllers are implemented in Python, MATLAB and ROS2/Gazebo simulations for trajectory optimization. The simulation frameworks and source codes are publicly available at the github page.

This vision article shows how to build on the framework of event-triggered Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) to design model-free controllers for safety-critical multi-agent systems with unknown dynamics, including humans in the loop. This event-triggered framework has been shown to be computationally efficient and robust while guaranteeing safety for systems with unknown dynamics. We show how to extend it to model-free safety critical control where a controllable ego agent does not need to model the dynamics of other agents and updates its control based only on events dependent on the error states of agents obtained by real-time sensor measurements. To facilitate the process of real-time sensor measurements critical in this approach, we also present CBF relative degree reduction methods, which can reduce the number of such measurements. We illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed framework on a multi-agent traffic merging decentralized control problem and on highway lane changing control with humans in the loop and relative degree reduction. We also compare the proposed event-driven method to the classical time-driven approach.

Inspections of industrial and civil infrastructures prevent unexpected failures that may lead to loss of life. Although inspection robotics is gaining momentum, most of field operations are still performed by human workers. For inspection robots, the main limiting factors are the low versatility and reliability in dynamic, non-structured and highly complex environments. To tackle these issues, we have designed a modular and self-reconfigurable hybrid platform, which consists of three units: the mobile Main Base and two Crawler Units with docking interfaces. The Crawler Unit operates in constrained environments and narrow spaces, while the Main Base will inspect wide areas and deploy/recover the Crawler Units near/from inspection sites, as in marsupial robots. Docking interfaces will allow the Crawler Units to reconfigure into a snake robot or mobile manipulators. In particular, the Crawler Units consist of four modules connected by three kinematic chains for nine active joints in total. Each module is equipped with half active, half passive tracks for moving. This paper discusses in detail the dynamic model of the Crawler Unit, especially focusing on the definition of effective constraint equations, which closely model the system features avoiding common simplifications. Numerical simulations and physical experiments validate the proposed dynamic model of the Crawler Unit.