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Overhead crane, as a common handling mechanical equipment, plays an irreplaceable role in modern industry. To ensure its efficient and reliable running, there is an urgent need to develop advanced control strategies. In this paper, a novel supervisory control scheme is proposed for overhead crane systems. The scheme involves a high-level decision making mechanism, called a supervisor, to evaluate which controller is suitable at the current instant of time among a family of candidate controllers. Detailedly, for all possible payloads, a multi-estimator is first introduced to achieve the appropriate estimations of trolley position, trolley velocity, payload angle and angular velocity. Then, based on the estimator signals, a family of candidate controllers are designed, each of which is workable for a certain payload. Finally, by constructing monitoring signals and online evaluating the values of the signals under different candidate controllers, the controller corresponding to the minimum value of the signals is applied to the system at the current instant of time. Under the proposed supervisory controller, the payload can be driven to the desired position, and meanwhile the swing of the payload is eliminated. Remarkably, uncertainties dynamical compensation and performance online evaluation mechanisms are included in the scheme, which endows the scheme powerful ability to suppress payload mass uncertainties, to guarantee fast setting-time, and to achieve online estimation of the payload masses. The simulation and experimental results show better workability of the proposed supervisory control scheme in application, including strong robustness, fast setting-time, accurate payload mass estimation, and convenient parameter selection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates global stabilization via adaptive event-triggered output feedback for a class of uncertain nonlinear systems. Typically, unknown polynomial-function rate is admitted in the unmeasurable-state dependent growth of the systems. This calls for an advanced compensation strategy based on dynamic high gain, which in turn requires more intelligent execution in the event-triggered control architecture. To this end, a novel event-triggering mechanism is designed with two events separately evaluating the behaviors of dynamic gain and the controller signal. Particularly, the event on controller signal is enforced to suspend for a certain time after each execution to guarantee a positive lower bound for the inter-execution intervals. More importantly, the suspension time and the threshold therein are both online adjusted according to dynamic gain (rather than pre-specified), which could become small enough as the dynamic gain increases. This ensures timely execution for the effectiveness of adaptive compensation. Then, with the dynamic gain delicately designed to counteract the influence of the execution error, an event-triggered controller via adaptive output feedback is proposed to make the original system states and observer states converge to zero. Further attempt is performed for more efficient resource saving and disturbance tolerance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to enlarge the applicability of event-triggered control for stochastic systems, and is particularly concerned with event-triggered stabilization for stochastic systems with control-dependent diffusion term. Roughly treating stochastic noises as unfavorable factors for system stability, the related works are based on Lyapunov-type conditions for ISS property with respect to sampling error as those in the nonstochastic context. The conditions imply the existence of a twice-differentiable Lyapunov function with negative-definite infinitesimal under continuous-time control, and indeed exclude many familiar stochastic systems with control-dependent diffusion term which are continuously stabilizable while no such Lyapunov function exists. As the main contribution of this article, an enlarged framework of event-triggered stabilization is established for stochastic systems with control-dependent diffusion term, starting from the system stability under continuous-time control, rather than from Lyapunov-type conditions for ISS property. Specifically, with moment exponential stability assumed under continuous-time control, elementary event-triggering mechanisms are proposed with an enforced minimum inter-execution interval, under which the event-triggered controller can render the system exponentially stable both in the sense of expectation and in the almost sure sense. Particularly, a distinctive analysis of closed-loop stability is performed via delicate comparison between the solutions under the event-triggered, and continuous-time controls. Within the framework, inclusive Lyapunov-type conditions incorporating the underlying positive effects of stochastic noises are presented for event-triggered exponential stabilization of the stochastic systems, where the candidate Lyapunov function involved is weakened to be nondifferentiable at the origin and, even, to allow non-negative infinitesimal under continuous-time control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates global practical output tracking via adaptive output feedback for a class of uncertain nonlinear systems. Remarkably, the control problem under investigation is in the context of unknown control directions and output feedback, which severely restricts the system nonlinearities. Nevertheless, the growth on the unknown system nonlinearities in this article is extended from polynomial (of output) to arbitrary function, and meanwhile no further a priori information is required on the reference signal to be tracked. Specifically, sufficiently smooth pseudosign and pseudo-dead-zone functions are introduced acting as substitutions of sign and dead-zone functions in the literature, respectively. Typically, based on the pseudo-dead-zone function, a delicate estimate on the unknown system nonlinearities is established and a novel Lyapunov function is proposed. This, together with the elegant system performance analysis, is quite critical to remove the polynomial constraint and overcome the technical obstacle stemming from the essential extension. Additionally owing to the two refined functions, the use of smooth domination/treatment is moderately avoided in control design that enables the established control strategy to be tighter and less conservative. It turns out that under the proposed adaptive output-feedback controller, all the closed-loop system states are globally bounded, while the system tracking error enters a prescribed λ neighborhood of the origin in finite time and remains inside thereafter. A simulation example illustrates the effectiveness of the proposed approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is devoted to the stabilization via adaptive feedback for a class of uncertain coupled reaction–diffusion dynamics in the actuation path of an ordinary differential equation (ODE) system. The system under investigation, a class of coupled parabolic partial differential equation (PDE)–ODE systems, is more representative since the dynamics in actuation path (i.e., the PDE subsystem) are coupled rather than uncoupled parabolic equations and hence includes those in the related literature as special cases. Moreover, serious parametric uncertainties are present in both PDE and ODE subsystems, which bring obstacles to the traditional methods on this issue. To solve the control problem, an infinite-dimensional backstepping transformation with time-varying matrix-valued kernel functions is adopted to change the original system into a new one. Then, an adaptive state-feedback controller is designed for the new system, which guarantees that all the closed-loop system states are bounded while regulating the original system states to zero. Finally, a simulation example is provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the theoretical results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the event-triggered stabilization for continuous-time stochastic systems. Due to stochastic effects, the system state is hard to predict and dominate, and the system behavior would vary with every trial (i.e., sample path) even for the same initial condition. This gives rise to substantial challenges, especially, in determining the execution/sampling times and assessing the closed-loop performance, which urges us to develop powerful and sophisticated tools/methods for the analysis and design of stochastic event-triggered control. In this article, basic theorems, particularly a stochastic convergence theorem, are first proposed for stochastic event-triggered controlled systems. Then, a framework of event-triggered stabilization is established for the stochastic systems without applying the well-known Lyapunov theorems. Specifically, we present conditions under which event-triggered stabilization is feasible for the systems. Accordingly, static and dynamic event-triggering mechanisms are proposed with enforcing a fixed positive lower bound for the interexecution times. While avoiding infinitely fast execution/sampling, both asymptotic stabilization and exponential stabilization are achieved for the systems by the proposed stochastic convergence theorem. The involved analysis is helpful to form a pattern for stochastic event-triggered controlled systems. As the direct application of the established framework, the constructive design of event-triggered controller is realized, respectively, for two representative classes of stochastic systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the event-triggered tracking for a class of uncertain nonlinear systems. Essentially different from the related works, the nonlinear systems allow serious (parametric) uncertainties, while no further a priori information, excepting some coarse information, is required on the reference signal to be tracked. This makes event-triggered control more challenging, partially because the sampling error cannot be precisely bounded any more. As main contributions of this paper, new adaptive event-triggered tracking schemes are proposed for the systems in two event-triggering architectures with different roles of the event-triggering mechanism on the information transmitting and control computing/updating. Much importantly, a dynamic gain is incorporated in either scheme not only to counteract the serious uncertainties, but also to overcome the bad influence of the sampling error. Based on the dynamic gain, two adaptive event-triggered controllers are designed with distinct event-triggering mechanisms, respectively. Particularly, to ensure application flexibility, one of the triggering mechanisms is rendered relatively independent of the controller signal. The designed event-triggered controllers are shown to achieve the practical tracking for the systems, that is, the prespecified arbitrary tracking accuracy can be guaranteed (a comparable objective to that via continuous-time control), while avoiding infinitely fast sampling/execution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on game theory, this paper considers the consensus problem of second-order hybrid multiagent systems (HMASs) in a leader–follower framework, which includes continuous-time multiagents and discrete-time multiagents. Firstly, the competitive relationship between two groups is modeled as a multi-player game type. To achieve consensus, we design different cost functions according to the rules of the game and assume that each player has a global purpose of minimizing their own cost. Moreover, the players adjust their states at the next moment according to the Nash equilibrium solution. Then, using matrix theory and stability theory, we analyze the necessary and sufficient conditions for the consensus problem of the second-order HMASs with different leaders, and show that the control parameters (sampling interval and feedback gain) and the eigenvalues of the network topology have essential impact on the consensus of the system. Finally, the validity of the results is tested by simulation examples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the control design with prescribed performance for uncertain nonlinear systems. Different from the existing literature, the systems under investigation possess unknown control directions and nonparametric uncertainties. Even so, the control objective to be achieved is still refined, not only to ensure the basic performance on stabilization, but also to guarantee certain prescribed performance required in real applications. Motivated by the funnel control method, a time-varying stabilizing scheme is developed for the systems, to effectively handle the serious uncertainties and to successfully guarantee the states to converge to zero with a prescribed rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is devoted to the analysis methods/tools to stochastic convergence and stochastic adaptive output-feedback control. As the first contribution, a general stochastic convergence theorem is proposed for stochastic nonlinear systems. The theorem doesn't necessarily involve a positive-definite function of the system states with negative-semidefinite infinitesimal, essentially different from stochastic LaSalle's theorem (see e.g., [1]), and hence can provide more opportunities to achieve stochastic convergence. Moreover, as a direct extension of the convergence theorem, a general version of stochastic Barb ă lat's lemma is obtained, which requires the concerned stochastic process to be almost surely integrable, rather than absolutely integrable in the sense of expectation, unlike in [2]. As the second contribution, supported by the general stochastic convergence theorem, an adaptive output-feedback control strategy is established for the global stabilization of a class of stochastic nonlinear systems with severe parametric uncertainties coupled to unmeasurable states. Its feasibility analysis takes substantial effort, and is largely based on the general stochastic convergence theorem. Particularly, for the resulting closed-loop system, certain stochastic boundedness and integrability are shown by the celebrated nonnegative semimartingale convergence theorem, and furthermore, the desired stochastic convergence is achieved via the general stochastic convergence theorem. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, the global adaptive regulation is considered for a class of uncertain stochastic high-order nonlinear systems with serious nonlinearities and unknowns. For details, the considered systems admit the general forms which include the strict-feedback systems as the special case, and allow the more complicated nonlinearities. Moreover, the system model suffers from both the unknown parameterized nonlinear growth conditions and the unknown time-varying control gain with unknown control direction (i.e. the sign of the control gain). By introducing two new design parameters and skillfully combining the adaptive design methods with the Nussbaum-type function based technique, a desired adaptive regulation control scheme is successfully presented, by which the obtained smooth controller can effectively guarantee that all the closed-loop system states are bounded almost surely, and especially the original system states converge to the origin with probability one. Finally, to demonstrate the feasibility of the control scheme, a numerical example is given. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is devoted to the practical tracking control with prescribed transient performance for a class of uncertain Euler-Lagrange (EL) equations. Remarkably, the system allows serious nonparametric uncertainties since all the system matrices are unknown and do not necessarily have known bounds. Moreover, the reference trajectory to be followed is more general since it does not necessarily have known bound or require to be twice-continuously differentiable but those of literature must do. For this, a funnel-based control scheme is proposed to overcome the serious uncertainties, and in turn to achieve certain prescribed closed-loop performance. Specifically, a funnel to which the tracking error belongs is first skillfully constructed with the aid of a time-varying function about a prescribed tracking accuracy parameter. Based on the funnel, a time-varying controller is designed which guarantees that all the closed-loop system signals are bounded while the tracking error evolves in the funnel set, that is, the system output tracks the reference trajectory with the prescribed convergence rate before the prescribed time. Finally, two application examples are used to validate the effectiveness of the theoretical results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]