In this paper, a novel adaptive fault-tolerant controller is proposed for a typical electrohydraulic rotary actuator in the presence of disturbances, internal leakage fault, and sensor fault simultaneously. To construct the suggested controller, a nonlinear unknown input observer is developed to effectively identify the sensor fault, which is unaffected by not only internal leakage fault but also mismatched disturbances/uncertainties. Furthermore, a radial basis function neural network is designed to compensate for the mismatched disturbances/uncertainties caused by payload variation and unknown friction nonlinearities. Besides, an adaptive law based on the projection mapping function is applied to tackle the effect of the internal leakage fault. The integration of the above-mentioned techniques into the adaptive backstepping terminal sliding mode is investigated to obtain high tracking performance, robustness as well as fast convergence. The stability of the closed-loop system is proven by the Lyapunov theory. Finally, the capability and effectiveness of the proposed approach are validated via simulation results under various faulty scenarios.

This article proposes a novel fault-tolerant controller for a double-rod electro-hydraulic actuator whilst the motion control system faces with system disturbances/uncertainties and internal leakage fault. Firstly, taking the advantage of the coordinate transformation, the nonlinear system is converted to a linear system to apply the control design tools in linear control theory. Besides, the matched, mismatched disturbances, and internal leakage fault are integrated into a new lumped uncertainty based on this transformation. Inspired by the great capability of time delay estimation technique, the suggested controller is developed to effectively detect and compensate for the internal leakage fault. To enhance the performance of the control system, an adaptive integral sliding mode control approach is deployed to effectively suppress the lump estimated error, and the effects of fault. The perfect combination of inputoutput feedback linearization, adaptive integral sliding mode, and time delay estimation is investigated to achieve high-precision tracking control and strong robustness in the presence of matched, mismatched disturbances, and faults, simultaneously. Moreover, the global stability of the suggested control algorithm is demonstrated by the Lyapunov theory. Finally, several tracking performance comparisons of the proposed approach with the existing controllers to demonstrate the efficiency are exhibited through simulation analyses and experiment results.

This paper presents a new control strategy that combines classical control and an optimization scheme to regulate the output voltage of the bidirectional converter under the presence of matched and mismatched disturbances. In detail, a control-oriented modeling method is presented first to capture the system dynamics in a common canonical form, allowing different disturbances to be considered. To estimate and compensate for unknown disturbances, an extended state observer (ESO)-based continuous sliding mode control is then proposed, which can guarantee high tracking precision, fast disturbance rejection, and chattering reduction. Next, an extremum seeking (ES)-based adaptive scheme is introduced to ensure system robustness as well as optimal control effort under different working scenarios. Finally, comparative simulations with classical proportional-integral-derivative (PID) control and constant switching gains are conducted to verify the effectiveness of the proposed adaptive control methodology through three case studies of load resistance variations, buck/boost mode switching, and input voltage variation.

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The electro-hydraulic servo system (EHSS) usually faces multiple sensor faults and disturbances, which is difficult to achieve good tracking control, reliability, and stability control. In this article, an advanced fault-tolerant controller is proposed for an EHSS to deal with the above challenge. The three fault observers, called nonlinear unknown input observers (NUIOs), are developed to effectively estimate the position, velocity, pressure sensor faults and the system states. The fault detection, estimation, and isolation are then presented as effective for multiple sensors failure at a time. The first NUIO for position sensor fault is utilized for the tracking control, while the other NUIOs are used for alarm proposal. The adverse effects caused by the matched and unmatched disturbances are eliminated by two extended state observers (ESOs). In addition, to avoid the “explosion of complexity” when computing the derivatives of virtual control laws, the dynamic surface control is applied to design the fault-tolerant control (FTC) scheme. The Lyapunov principle ensures system stability under lumped disturbance and faulty conditions. Finally, simulation studies and evaluation results are performed to demonstrate the validity of the proposed FTC algorithm.

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Inspired by improving the adaptive capability of the robot to external impacts or shocks, the adjustable stiffness behavior in joints is investigated to ensure conformity with the safety index. This paper proposes a new soft actuation unit, namely Adjustable Stiffness Rotary Actuator (ASRA), induced by a novel optimization of the elastic energy in an adjusting stiffness mechanism. Specifically, a stiffness transmission is configured by three pairs of antagonistically linear springs with linkage bars. The rotational disk and link bars assist the simplified stiffness control based on a linear transmission. To enhance the elastic energy efficiency, the force compressions of the linear springs are set to be perpendicular to the three-spoke output element, i.e., the output link direction. Besides, the ASRA model is also formed to investigate the theoretical capabilities of the stiffness output and passive energy. As a simulated result, a high passive energy storage ability can be achieved. Then, several experimental scenarios are performed with integral sliding mode controllers to verify the physical characteristics of the ASRA. As trial results, the fast transient response and high accuracy of both the position and stiffness tracking tests are expressed, in turn, independent and simultaneous control cases. Moreover, the real output torque is measured to investigate its reflecting stiffness.

In this article, the design and implementation of a fault-tolerant controller are proposed for an electro-hydraulic actuator (EHA) in the presence of disturbances and actuator faults. The existence of nonlinearities, uncertainties, and a bias fault (i.e., internal leakage fault) in the system dynamics significantly decreases the desired performance. The nonlinear disturbance observers (NDO) are constructed to handle the adverse influences caused by the above disadvantages. The whole fault-tolerant control (FTC) scheme consists of two design loops: an inner force control loop and an outer position control loop. The inner loop is based on an optimized backstepping framework to achieve the optimal performance, whilst the problem of uncertainties and disturbances is dealt with using a terminal sliding mode directly designed from the position tracking error. It is shown by theoretical analysis that system stability is ensured under faulty conditions. Finally, simulation results and comparison studies are conducted to further verify the effectiveness of the proposed approach.