Steering and target tracking performance improvement of lateral control systems for autonomous vehicles

Regression-based inverter control for power flow and voltage regulation

Rapid and substantial voltage changes can occur in distribution networks with a high pen- etration of photovoltaic (PV) systems, due to their unpredictable nature. Electronic power inverters are capable of delivering fast reactive power support to maintain customer voltages within operating tolerances and reduce system losses in distribution...

Rigid Formation Control using Hovercrafts: A Spatial Model Predictive Control Approach

The steady increase in volume of goods to be transported over land and water has necessitated the development of efficient and alternative methods of transportation. In current practices considerable amount of transportation delay is caused due to switching between different modes of transportation resulting in economic losses. Another...

Mobile robot swarming using radio signal strength measurements and dead-reckoning

The mobile robots considered in this thesis are six legged "Zebro" robots. These mobile robots will use Radio Signal Strength (RSS) measurements to determine the distances towards other mobile robots and radio beacons placed in the surroundings. A combination of distance measurements and dead-reckoning is used to perform a localization of the...

Transportation of Cable Suspended Load using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles: A Real-time Model Predictive Control approach

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) have received an increasing amount of attention recently with many applications being actively investigated across the globe, and several related open research questions being actively pursued. Possible applications include search and rescue, disaster relief, environmental monitoring and surveillance,...

SLAMming with Spheros: An impact-based approach to Simultaneous Localization and Mapping

The Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) problem for mobile robots aims at consistently building a map of an unknown environment while simultaneously determining its position within this map. From a control-theoretic viewpoint, it is somehow analogous to simultaneously estimating the states and output map of the system. In the robotics...

Predictive control for residential capacity controlled heat pumps in a smart grid scenario

Design of a position determination system for a ship’s hull maintenance robot

Positioning and localization are key topics associated with the control and operation of robotic vehicles. This holds in particular for robots functioning in a challenging environment, such as the ship’s hull maintenance robot developed by Fleet Cleaner. As the industry standard techniques are limited due to constraints imposed by the harbor and...

Distributed Connectivity-Aware Multirobot Exploration

Networks of mobile robots enable us to explore areas quickly and without danger to human operators. To execute this task successfully, communication between the robots in the network is imperative. In this thesis, we link communication between robots to network integrity, where network integrity is defined as the ability of the network to...

Optimal Control for Race Car Minimum Time Maneuvering

Minimizing the time needed to travel a prescribed distance is the main development goal in motorsports. In racing car development, simulations are used to predict the effect of design parameter changes on vehicle performance. If approached as an optimal trajectory planning problem, a maneuver simulation can be used to determine not only the...

Scheduling the Refuelling Activities of Multiple Heterogeneous Autonomous Mobile Robots

When a team of autonomous mobile robots (MRs) has to perform a mission of a duration that exceeds their energy capacities, the mission can only be fulfilled if the MRs are resupplied. Nowadays most MRs are powered by batteries, which can either be recharged, or replaced. Since it is not necessary that the MRs are battery powered, we will use the...

Real-time receding horizon trajectory generation for long heavy vehicle combinations on highways

The so-called A-double long heavy vehicle combination is a 32 meter long and up to 80 tonnes heavy double-trailer truck widely used in Canada and Australia today, and will be more abundant on the road also in Europe in the near future. They have the potential to decrease road transport cost, traffic congestion and generate lower emissions than...

Fast optimization-based control and estimation using operator splitting methods

The size of modern technological systems has grown significantly and the need for fast, online optimization-based control is a necessity. The complexity of these systems along with the need for increased accuracy in the computed outcome dictate the usage of optimization methods for the computation of the solution. Besides this, new data arrive...