The objective of this research is to develop new adaptive failure compensation technologies for control of dynamic systems with uncertain failures, with applications to Performance-critical systems such as aircraft, autonomous systems, and systems with MEM actuators.
Intellectual merit: The approach is failure compensation by direct adaptation of controller parameters without explicit fault detection and diagnosis, for fast, reliable and robust compensation of uncertain system failures. The key feature of adaptive failure compensation is its ability to ensure both stability and asymptotic tracking without the knowledge of when, how much and how many failures in the system. New system modeling techniques and adaptive control methods will be developed to handle large system variations caused by failures, nonlinear and multivariable dynamics uncertainties in the presence of failures, and multiple actuating signals needed for failure compensation. A novel and systematic theoretical framework will be developed for adaptive failure compensation, with solutions for several synergic performance-critical system applications.
Broader impacts: This research will develop guidelines and techniques for designing control systems with guaranteed stability and tracking performance in the presence of system parameter, dynamics and failure uncertainties. It will advance adaptive control theory and techniques, needed for emerging applications such as safe aircraft, intelligent robotic systems, adaptive space structures, autonomous vehicles, and MEM technology, for which effective compensation of system failures is crucial to improve reliability, maintainability and survivability. Research activities and results will bring new concepts and theory of adaptive control into student training and knowledge dissemination and assist industrial and government researchers in this important area.
