NONLINEAR CONTROLLER COMPARISON ON A BENCHMARK ...
NONLINEAR CONTROLLER COMPARISON ON A BENCHMARK ...
NONLINEAR CONTROLLER COMPARISON ON A BENCHMARK ...
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problem and a Galerkin approximation to the non-linear H1 problem are studied and<br />
compared with the results of a linearized optimal control, a linearized H1 control, a<br />
passivity-based control, and a control law based on integrator backstepping. These<br />
control strategies are chosen because they are current topics of research, and most<br />
are proposed as control laws that will be provide robust performance.<br />
The speci c hardware system, upon which the tests were performed, is de-<br />
scribed in Chapter 2 along with a derivation of the equations of motion. Chapter 3<br />
presents an overview of the control strategies tested, and it explains the details of the<br />
implementations of each algorithm. Chapter 3 also explains the successive Galerkin<br />
approximation technique and shows how it is implemented on the hardware system.<br />
Chapter 4 explains the mechanics of the testbed and the methods of comparing per-<br />
formance, and a comparison of the six controls in simulation is presented. The actual<br />
results of the tests as performed in hardware are compared and discussed in Chap-<br />
ter 5, and an analysis of the robustness of the control laws is presented in Chapter<br />
6. Finally Chapter 7 sums up the results of the experiment the conclusions of the<br />
research are presented along with recommendations for future research.<br />
1.2 Contributions<br />
There is often a wide gap between mathematical systems and the physical<br />
plants these systems attempt to model. The TORA system is proposed in [2] as<br />
a benchmark problem so that nonlinear control algorithms can be compared on a<br />
common system { a system that can be easily implemented in hardware. While many<br />
control designs perform well in the idealized environment of mathematics, the true<br />
test of a nonlinear algorithm must lie in its regulation of a physical plant. The SGA<br />
technique is applied to the nonlinear benchmark problem, and it performs better than<br />
other well known nonlinear techniques when applied to a physical implementation of<br />
this TORA system. This result is the main contribution of this thesis: it o ers<br />
experimental evidence that the SGA method produces excellent results when applied<br />
to real-life problems and systems. This thesis also justi es further research into<br />
understanding, clarifying, and improving the SGA technique.<br />
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