Describes progress in an active area of research across a broad range of engineering disciplines.

This is the first comprehensive book on the AIMD algorithm, the most widely used method for allocating a limited resource among competing agents without centralized control. The authors offer a new approach that is based on positive switched linear systems. It is used to develop most of the main results found in the book, and fundamental results on stochastic switched nonnegative and consensus systems are derived to obtain these results. The original and best known application of the algorithm is in the context of congestion control and resource allocation on the Internet, and readers will find details of several variants of the algorithm in order of increasing complexity, including deterministic, random, linear, and nonlinear versions. In each case, stability and convergence results are derived based on unifying principles. Basic and fundamental properties of the algorithm are described, examples are used to illustrate the richness of the resulting dynamical systems, and applications are provided to show how the algorithm can be used in the context of smart cities, intelligent transportation systems, and the smart grid.

This book introduces and develops the mathematical models used to describe crane dynamics, and explores established and emerging control methods employed for industrial cranes. It opens with a general introduction to the design and structure of various crane types including gantry cranes, rotary cranes, and mobile cranes currently being used for material handling processes. Mathematical models describing their dynamics for control purposes are developed via two different modeling approaches: lumped-mass and distributed parameter models. Control strategies applicable to real industrial problems are then discussed, including open-loop control, feedback control, boundary control, and hybrid control strategies. Finally, based on the methods covered in the book, future research directions are proposed for the advancement of crane technologies. This book can be used by graduate students, engineers, and researchers in the material handling industry including those working in warehouses, manufacturing, construction sites, ship building, seaports, container terminals, nuclear power plants, and in offshore engineering.

Due to the improvements on electric motors and motor control technology, alternative vehicle power system layouts have been considered. One of the latest is known as distributed drive electric vehicles (DDEVs), which consist of four motors that are integrated into each drive and can be independently controllable. Such an innovative design provides packaging advantages, including short transmission chain, fast and accurate torque response, and so on. Based on these advantages and features, this book takes stability and energy-saving as cut-in points, and conducts investigations from the aspects of Vehicle State Estimation, Direct Yaw Moment Control (DYC), Control Allocation (CA). Moreover, lots of advanced algorithms, such as general regression neural network, adaptive sliding mode control-based optimization, as well as genetic algorithms, are applied for a better control performance.

This monograph introduces recent developments in formation control of distributed-agent systems. Eschewing the traditional concern with the dynamic characteristics of individual agents, the book proposes a treatment that studies the formation control problem in terms of interactions among agents including factors such as sensing topology, communication and actuation topologies, and computations. Keeping pace with recent technological advancements in control, communications, sensing and computation that have begun to bring the applications of distributed-systems theory out of the industrial sphere and into that of day-to-day life, this monograph provides distributed control algorithms for a group of agents that may behave together. Unlike traditional control laws that usually require measurements with respect to a global coordinate frame and communications between a centralized operation center and agents, this book provides control laws that require only relative measurements and communications between agents without interaction with a centralized operator. Since the control algorithms presented in this book do not require any global sensing and any information exchanges with a centralized operation center, they can be realized in a fully distributed way, which significantly reduces the operation and implementation costs of a group of agents. Formation Control will give both students and researchers interested in pursuing this field a good grounding on which to base their work.

Adaptive Identification and Control of Uncertain Systems with Nonsmooth Dynamics reports some of the latest research on modeling, identification and adaptive control for systems with nonsmooth dynamics (e.g., backlash, dead zone, friction, saturation, etc). The authors present recent research results for the modelling and control designs of uncertain systems with nonsmooth dynamics, such as friction, dead-zone, saturation and hysteresis, etc., with particular applications in servo systems. The book is organized into 19 chapters, distributed in five parts concerning the four types of nonsmooth characteristics, namely friction, dead-zone, saturation and hysteresis, respectively. Practical experiments are also included to validate and exemplify the proposed approaches. This valuable resource can help both researchers and practitioners to learn and understand nonlinear adaptive control designs. Academics, engineers and graduate students in the fields of electrical engineering, control systems, mechanical engineering, applied mathematics and computer science can benefit from the book. It can be also used as a reference book on adaptive control for servo systems for students with some background in control engineering. - Explains the latest research outputs on modeling, identification and adaptive control for systems with nonsmooth dynamics - Provides practical application and experimental results for robotic systems, and servo motors