A control design for a tracked vehicle with implicit nonlinearities using quantitative feedback theory

Abstract

A vehicle speed control system is developed for the M113 tracked vehicle. Because the nonlinearities involved are implicit in the model, it is difficult to apply most currently available techniques. However, Quantitative Feedback Theory offers an alternative solution to this complex control design problem. The main idea of QFT nonlinear control design is to design one robust controller for an equivalent family of linear time-invariant models of the nonlinear system to be controlled. system set has the similar input-output behaviors as the nonlinear system in the desired operation range. The robust controller is designed every member of the equvalent set would perform well as specified. Its performance and validity is further verified through extensive simulations to show satisfactory results. The equivalent linear time-invariantto ensure that Introduction An M113 armored personnel carrier was used as a robot vehicle in the FMC's autonomous vehicle testbed program. In order to carry out missions autonomously, a control system needs to be developed in response to a variety of commands. The commands under consideration include cruising, turning, advancing a specified distance, etc. Each command requires special compensation loops to complete its purpose. In this paper, we focus on cruise control to illustrate the major issues in the control design for such a tracked vehicle.

A review of quantitative feedback theory as a robust control system design technique

“…There are several well documented aerospace applications, these include flight control systems of the ~.-1~~ aircraft (Betzold et al, 1984), the control of the forward svrept wing X-29 aircraft (Waike ei al, 1984), flight control reconfiguration design of the AFT1/F16 fighter ~~~rQ~vitz ~t al, 1985), MIMO flight control system design for YF16 aircraft (Miller, 1990), and application to a missile control system (Azvine and Wynne, 1992). There are also applications in the field of robotics and autonomous vehicles (Hamilton et al, 1989;Wang et al, 1988). The paper by Azvine and Wynne also includes the design of a QFT controller for a hydraulic positioning system.…”

Path Tracking using Vector Pursuit Algorithm for Tracked Vehicles Driving on the Soft Cohesive Soil

“…In that case, the motion of the tracked vehicle can be represented by three degrees of freedom (x, y, w) , where (x, y) represents the attached coordinate of mass center of the vehicle, and yr is the heading angle of the vehicle as shown in Fig. 2 (9) OL OVI If kr is nonzero, the location of the desired instantaneous screw's centerline in the vehicle where, coL, cR are the angular velocities of left and right tracks respectively and r is the radius of sprocket.…”

“…For soft ground, the interacting between tracks, road wheels and soil become so complex that the basic theory on pressure-sinkage and shear-traction force is restricted in its application. Wong et al [9] developed an analytical method for predicting the normal pressure distribution under a moving tracked vehicle, taking into account the response of the terrain to repetitive shear loading. Murakami et al [10] developed an analytical method for investigation of the steerability of tracked vehicles in time domain.…”

Survey of quantitative feedback theory (QFT)

“…The technique involves only integrations of the data and is highly immune to noise [42]. It has been successfully applied to #ight control [43,44], steering control [45], and welding [46]. The Golubev technique was extended by Boje [47] to MIMO plants and to plants with non-zero initial state values.…”