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This paper considers a class of thrust vectoring systems, which are nonlinear, overactuated, and time-invariant. We assume that the system is composed of two subsystems and there exist singular points around which the linearized system is uncontrollable. Furthermore, we assume that the system is stabilizable through a two-level control allocation. In this particular setting, we cannot do much with the linearized system, and a direct nonlinear control approach must be used to analyze the system stability. Under adequate assumptions and a suitable nonlinear continuous control-allocation law, we can prove uniform asymptotic convergence of the points of equilibrium using Lyapunov input-to-state stability and the small gain theorem. This control allocation, however, requires the design of an allocated mapping and introduces two exogenous inputs. In particular, the closed-loop system is cascaded, and the output of one subsystem is the disturbance of the other, and vice versa. In general, it is difficult to find a closed-form solution for the allocated mapping; it needs to satisfy restrictive conditions, among which Lipschitz continuity to ensure that the disturbances eventually vanish. Additionally, this mapping is in general nontrivial and non-unique. In this paper, we propose a new kernel-based predictive control allocation to substitute the need for designing an analytic mapping, and assess if it can produce a meaningful mapping ``on-the-fly" by solving online an optimization problem. The simulations include three examples, which are the manipulation of an object through an unmanned aerial vehicle in two and three dimensions, and the control of a surface vessel actuated by two azimuthal thrusters., Comment: The preliminary results were presented in `Nguyen, Tam W., Kenji Hirata, and Kyoungseok Han. "A Nullspace-Based Predictive Control Allocation for the Control of a Quadcopter Manipulating an Object Attached to the Ground." IFAC-PapersOnLine 56.2 (2023): 6286-6291.'

Unlike fixed-gain robust control, which trades off performance with modeling uncertainty, direct adaptive control uses partial modeling information for online tuning. The present paper combines retrospective cost adaptive control (RCAC), a direct adaptive control technique for sampled-data systems, with online system identification based on recursive least squares (RLS) with variable-rate forgetting (VRF). The combination of RCAC and RLS-VRF constitutes data-driven RCAC (DDRCAC), where the online system identification is used to construct the target model, which defines the retrospective performance variable. This paper investigates the ability of RLS-VRF to provide the modeling information needed for the target model, especially nonminimum-phase (NMP) zeros. DDRCAC is applied to single-input, single-output (SISO) and multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) numerical examples with unknown NMP zeros, as well as several flight control problems, namely, unknown transition from minimum-phase to NMP lateral dynamics, flexible modes, flutter, and nonlinear planar missile dynamics., Comment: 60 pages, 28 figures, accepted by AIAA Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics

Model predictive control (MPC) is a widely used modern control technique with numerous successful application in diverse areas. Much of this success is due to the ability of MPC to enforce state and control constraints, which are crucial in many applications of control. In order to avoid the need for an observer, output-feedback model predictive control with online identification (OFMPCOI) uses the block observable canonical form whose state consists of past values of the control inputs and measured outputs. Online identification is performed using recursive least squares (RLS) with variable-rate forgetting. The article describes the algorithmic details of OFMPCOI and numerically investigates its performance through a collection of numerical examples that highlight various control challenges, such as model order uncertainty, sensor noise, prediction horizon, stabilization, magnitude and move-size saturation, and stabilization. The numerical examples are used to probe the performance of OFMPCOI in terms of persistency, consistency, and exigency. Since OFMPCOI does not employ a separate control perturbation to enhance persistency, the focus is on self-generated persistency during transient operation. For closed-loop identification using RLS, sensor noise gives rise to bias in the identified model, and the goal is to determine the effect of the lack of consistency. Finally, the numerical examples reveal exigency, which is the extent to which the online identification emphasizes model characteristics that are most relevant to meeting performance objectives., Comment: 61 pages, 27 figures, "T. W. Nguyen, S. A. Ul Islam, A. L. Bruce, A. Goel, D. S. Bernstein and I. V. Kolmanovsky, "Output-Feedback RLS-Based Model Predictive Control*," 2020 American Control Conference (ACC), Denver, CO, USA, 2020, pp. 2395-2400, doi: 10.23919/ACC45564.2020.9148011."

This technical note focuses on the control of a quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) tethered to the ground. The control objective is to stabilize the UAV to the desired position while ensuring that the cable remains taut at all times. A cascade control scheme is proposed. The inner loop controls the attitude of the UAV. The outer loop gives the attitude reference to the inner loop, and is designed so that (i) the gravity force is compensated, (ii) the cable is taut at all times, and (iii) the trajectory of the UAV follows the geodesic path. To prove asymptotic stability, small gain arguments are used. The control scheme is augmented with a reference governor to enforce constraints.

We report the first quantum key distribution (QKD) systems capable of delivering sustainable, real-time secure keys continuously at rates exceeding 10 Mb/s. To achieve such rates, we developed high speed post-processing modules, achieving maximum data throughputs of 60 MC/s, 55 Mb/s, and 108 Mb/s for standalone operation of sifting, error correction and privacy amplification modules, respectively. The photonic layer of the QKD systems features high-speed single photon detectors based on self-differencing InGaAs avalanche photodiodes, phase encoding using asymmetric Mach-Zehnder interferometer, and active stabilization of the interferometer phase and photon polarisation. An efficient variant of the decoy-state BB84 protocol is implemented for security analysis, with a large dataset size of $10^8$ bits selected to mitigate finite-size effects. Over a 2 dB channel, a record secure key rate of 13.72 Mb/s has been achieved averaged over 4.4 days of operation. We confirm the robustness and long-term stability on a second QKD system continuously running for 1 month without any user intervention., Comment: 7 pages, 8 figures, 1 table

This paper focuses on the control of a cooperative system composed of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) and an Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV) manipulating an object. The two units are subject to input saturations and collaborate to move the object to a desired pose characterized by its position and inclination. The dynamics are derived using Euler-Lagrange method. A pre-stabilizing control law is proposed where the UGV is tasked to deploy the object to a certain position whereas the UAV adjusts its inclination. In particular, a proportional-derivative control law is proposed for the UGV, and a cascade control approach is used for the UAV, where the inner loop controls the attitude of the UAV and the outer loop stabilizes the inclination of the object. Then, we prove the stability of the points of equilibrium using small gain arguments. To ensure constraints satisfaction at all times, a reference governor unit is added to the pre-stabilizing control scheme. Finally, numerical results combined with experimental results are provided to validate the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme in practice., Comment: 16 pages, 7 figures

The persistent decay of bubble clusters in coarsening two-dimensional soap froths is measured experimentally as a function of cluster volume fraction. Dramatically stronger decay is observed in comparison to soap froth models and to measurements and calculations of persistence in other systems. The fraction of individual bubbles that contain any persistent area also decays, implying significant bubble motion and suggesting that T1 processes play an important role in froth persistence., Comment: 5 pages, revtex, 4 eps figures. To appear in Europhys. Lett

Correlation in two-dimensional soap froth is analysed with an effective potential for the first time. Cells with equal number of sides repel (with linear correlation) while cells with different number of sides attract (with NON-bilinear) for nearest neighbours, which cannot be explained by the maximum entropy argument. Also, the analysis indicates that froth is correlated up to the third shell neighbours at least, contradicting the conventional ideas that froth is not strongly correlated., Comment: 10 Pages LaTeX, 6 Postscript figures

We investigate the statistical properties of two dimensional random cellular systems (froths) in term of their shell structure. The froth is analyzed as a system of concentric layers of cells around a given central cell. We derive exact analytical relations for the topological properties of the sets of cells belonging to these layers. Experimental observations of the shell structure of two-dimensional soap froth are made and compared with the results on two kinds of Voronoi constructions. It is found that there are specific differences between soap froths and purely geometrical constructions. In particular these systems differ in the topological charge of clusters as a function of shell number, in the asymptotic values of defect concentrations, and in the number of cells in a given layer. We derive approximate expressions with no free parameters which correctly explain these different behaviors., Comment: 23 Pages Postscript, 4 figures