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The problem of vessel collisions or near-collision situations on sea, often caused by human error due to incomplete or overwhelming information, is becoming more and more important with rising maritime traffic. Approaches to supply navigators and Vessel Traffic Services with expert knowledge and suggest trajectories for all vessels to avoid collisions, are often aimed at situations where a single planner guides all vessels with perfect information. In contrast, we suggest a two-part procedure which plans trajectories using a specialised A* and negotiates trajectories until a solution is found, which is acceptable for all vessels. The solution obeys collision avoidance rules, includes a dynamic model of all vessels and negotiates trajectories to optimise globally without a global planner and extensive information disclosure. The procedure combines all components necessary to solve a multi-vessel encounter and is tested currently in simulation and on several test beds. The first results show a fast converging optimisation process which after a few negotiation rounds already produce feasible, collision free trajectories.
In this paper an approach towards databased fault diagnosis of linear electromagnetic actuators is presented. Time and time-frequency-domain methods were applied to extract fault related features from current and voltage measurements. The resulting features were transformed to enhance class separability using either Principal Component Analysis (PCA) or Optimal Transformation. Feature selection and dimensionality reduction was performed employing a modified Fisher-ratio. Fault detection was carried out using a Support-Vector-Machine classifier trained with randomly selected data subsets. Results showed, that not only the used feature sets (time-domain/time-frequency-domain) are crucial for fault detection and classification, but also feature pre-processing. PCA transformed time-domain features allow fault detection and classification without misclassification, relying on current and voltage measurements making two sensors necessary to generate the data. Optimal transformed time-frequency-domain features allow a misclassification free result as well, but as they are calculated from current measurements only, a dedicated voltage sensor is not necessary. Using those features is a promising alternative even for detecting purely supply voltage related faults.
Small vessels or unmanned surface vehicles only have a limited amount of space and energy available. If these vessels require an active sensing collision avoidance system it is often not possible to mount large sensor systems like X-Band radars. Thus, in this paper an energy efficient automotive radar and a laser range sensor are evaluated for tracking surrounding vessels. For these targets, those type of sensors typically generate more than one detection per scan. Therefore, an extended target tracking problem has to be solved to estimate state end extension of the vessels. In this paper, an extended version of the probabilistic data association filter that uses random matrices is applied. The performance of the tracking system using either radar or laser range data is demonstrated in real experiments.
Probabilistic data association for tracking extended targets under clutter using random matrices
(2015)
The use of random matrices for tracking extended objects has received high attention in recent years. It is an efficient approach for tracking objects that give rise to more than one measurement per time step. In this paper, the concept of random matrices is used to track surface vessels using highresolution automotive radar sensors. Since the radar also receives a large number of clutter measurements from the water, for the data association problem, a generalized probabilistic data association filter is applied. Additionally, a modification of the filter update step is proposed to incorporate the Doppler velocity measurements. The presented tracking algorithm is validated using Monte Carlo Simulation, and some performance results with real radar data are shown as well.
A semilinear distributed parameter approach for solenoid valve control including saturation effects
(2015)
In this paper a semilinear parabolic PDE for the control of solenoid valves is presented. The distributed parameter model of the cylinder becomes nonlinear by the inclusion of saturation effects due to the material's B/H-curve. A flatness based solution of the semilinear PDE is shown as well as a convergence proof of its series solution. By numerical simulation results the adaptability of the approach is demonstrated, and differences between the linear and the nonlinear case are discussed. The major contribution of this paper is the inclusion of saturation effects into the magnetic field governing linear diffusion equation, and the development of a flatness based solution for the resulting semilinear PDE as an extension of previous works [1] and [2].
The improvement of collision avoidance for vessels in close range encounter situations is an important topic for maritime traffic safety. Typical approaches generate evasive trajectories or optimise the trajectories of all involved vessels. Such a collision avoidance system has to produce evasive manoeuvres that do not confuse other navigators. To achieve this behaviour, a probabilistic obstacle handling based on information from a radar sensor with target tracking, that considers measurement and tracking uncertainties is proposed. A grid based path search algorithm, that takes the information from the probabilistic obstacle handling into account, is then used to generate evasive trajectories. The proposed algorithms have been tested and verified in a simulated environment for inland waters.
Motion safety for vessels
(2015)
The improvement of collision avoidance for vessels in close range encounter situations is an important topic for maritime traffic safety. Typical approaches generate evasive trajectories or optimise the trajectories of all involved vessels. The idea of this work is to validate these trajectories related to guaranteed motion safety, which means that it is not sufficient for a trajectory to be collision-free, but it must additionally ensure that an evasive manoeuvre is performable at any time. An approach using the distance and the evolution of the distance to the other vessels is proposed. The concept of Inevitable Collision States (ICS) is adopted to identify the states for which no evasive manoeuvre exist. Furthermore, it is implemented into a collision avoidance system for recreational crafts to demonstrate the performance.
Knowing the position of the spool in a solenoid valve, without using costly position sensors, is of considerable interest in a lot of industrial applications. In this paper, the problem of position estimation based on state observers for fast-switching solenoids, with sole use of simple voltage and current measurements, is investigated. Due to the short spool traveling time in fast-switching valves, convergence of the observer errors has to be achieved very fast. Moreover, the observer has to be robust against modeling uncertainties and parameter variations. Therefore, different state observer approaches are investigated, and compared to each other regarding possible uncertainties. The investigation covers a High-Gain-Observer approach, a combined High-Gain Sliding-Mode-Observer approach, both based on extended linearization, and a nonlinear Sliding-Mode-Observer based on equivalent output injection. The results are discussed by means of numerical simulations for all approaches, and finally physical experiments on a valve-mock-up are thoroughly discussed for the nonlinear Sliding-Mode-Observer.
In this paper, a gain-scheduled nonlinear control structure is proposed for a surface vessel, which takes advantage of extended linearisation techniques. Thereby, an accurate tracking of desired trajectories can be guaranteed that contributes to a safe and reliable water transport. The PI state feedback control is extended by a feedforward control based on an inverse system model. To achieve an accurate trajectory tracking, however, an observer-based disturbance compensation is necessary: external disturbances by cross currents or wind forces in lateral direction and wave-induced measurement disturbances are estimated by a nonlinear observer and used for a compensation. The efficiency and the achieved tracking performance are shown by simulation results using a validated model of the ship Korona at the HTWG Konstanz, Germany. Here, both tracking behaviour and rejection of disturbance forces in lateral direction are considered.
Sliding-mode observation with iterative parameter adaption for fast-switching solenoid valves
(2016)
Control of the armature motion of fast-switching solenoid valves is highly desired to reduce noise emission and wear of material. For feedback control, information of the current position and velocity of the armature are necessary. In mass production applications, however, position sensors are unavailable due to cost and fabrication reasons. Thus, position estimation by measuring merely electrical quantities is a key enabler for advanced control, and, hence, for efficient and robust operation of digital valves in advanced hydraulic applications. The work presented here addresses the problem of state estimation, i.e., position and velocity of the armature, by sole use of electrical measurements. The considered devices typically exhibit nonlinear and very fast dynamics, which makes observer design a challenging task. In view of the presence of parameter uncertainty and possible modeling inaccuracy, the robustness properties of sliding mode observation techniques are deployed here. The focus is on error convergence in the presence of several sources for modeling uncertainty and inaccuracy. Furthermore, the cyclic operation of switching solenoids is exploited to iteratively correct a critical parameter by taking into account the norm of the observation error of past switching cycles of the process. A thorough discussion on real-world experimental results highlights the usefulness of the proposed state observation approach.
The method of signal injection is investigated for position estimation of proportional solenoid valves. A simple observer is proposed to estimate a position-dependent parameter, i.e. the eddy current resistance, from which the position is calculated analytically. Therefore, the relationship of position and impedance in the case of sinusoidal excitation is accurately described by consideration of classical electrodynamics. The observer approach is compared with a standard identification method, and evaluated by practical experiments on an off-the-shelf proportional solenoid valve.
A lot of procedures for estimating the spool position in linear electromagnetic actuators using voltage and current measurements only, can be found in the literature. Subject to the accuracy of the estimated spool position some achieve better, some worse results. However, in almost every approach hysteresis has a huge impact on the estimation accuracy that can be achieved. Regardless whether these effects are caused by magnetic or mechanical hysteresis, they will limit the accuracy of the position estimate, if not taken into account. In this paper, a model is introduced which covers the hysteresis effects as well as other nonlinear ities occurring in estimated position-dependent parameters. A classical Preisach model is deployed first, which is then adjusted by using novel elementary preceding Relay-Operators. The resulting model for the estimated position-dependent parameters including the adjusted Preisach model can be easily applied to position estimation tasks. It is shown that the considered model distinctly improves the accuracy for the spool position estimate, while it is kept as simple as possible for real-time implementation reasons.
An approach for an adaptive position-dependent friction estimation for linear electromagnetic actuators with altered characteristics is proposed in this paper. The objective is to obtain a friction model that can be used to describe different stages of aging of magnetic actuators. It is compared to a classical Stribeck friction model by means of model fit, sensitivity, and parameter correlation. The identifiability of the parameters in the friction model is of special interest since the model is supposed to be used for diagnostic and prognostic purposes. A method based on the Fisher information matrix is employed to analyze the quality of the model structure and the parameter estimates.
In this paper, utilisation of an Unscented Kalman Filter for concurrently performing disturbance estimation and wave filtering is investigated. Experimental results are provided that demonstrate very good performance subject to both tasks. For the filter, a dynamic model has been used which was optimised via correlation analysis in order to obtain a minimum set of relevant parameters. This model has also been validated by experiments deploying a small vessel. A simulation study is presented to evaluate the performance using known quantities. Experimental trials have been performed on the Rhine river. The results show that for instance flow direction and varying current velocities can continuously be estimated with decent precision, even while the boat is performing turning manoeuvres. Moreover, the filtering properties are very satisfactory. This makes the filter suitable for being used, for instance, in autonomous vessel applications or assistance systems.