Integration of the computer controlled screwdriver for Robotic manufacturing in the ROS environment

The computer controlled screwdriver is a modern technique to perform automatic screwing/unscrewing operations.The main focus is to study the integration of the computer controlled screwdriver for Robotic manufacturing in the ROS environment.This thesis describes a concept of automatic screwing mechanism composed by universal robots, in which one arm of the robot is for inserting cables and the other is for screwing the cables on the control panel switch gear box. So far this mechanism is carried out by human operators and is a fairly complex one to perform, due to the multiple cables and connections involved. It's for this reason that an automatic cabling and screwing process would be highly preferred within automotive/automation industries. A study is carried out to analyze the difficulties currently faced and a controller based algorithm is developed to replace the manual human efforts using universal robots, thereby allowing robot arms to insert the cables and screw them onto the control panel switch gear box. Experiments were conducted to evaluate the insertion and screwing strategy, which shows the result of inserting and screwing cables on the control panel switch gearbox precisely.

Generic wind estimation and compensation based on residual generators and higher-order sliding mode schemes

This master thesis proposes a solution to the approach problem in case of unknown severe microburst wind shear for a fixed-wing aircraft, accounting for both longitudinal and lateral dynamics. The adaptive controller design for wind rejection is also addressed, exploiting the wind estimation provided by suitable estimators. It is able to successfully complete the final approach phase even in presence of wind shear, and at the same time aerodynamic envelope protection is retained. The adaptive controller for wind compensation has been designed by a backstepping approach and feedback linearization for time-varying systems. The wind shear components have been estimated by higher-order sliding mode schemes. At the end of this work the results are provided, an autonomous final approach in presence of microburst is discussed, performances are analyzed, and estimation of the microburst characteristics from telemetry data is examined.

Development of an innovative non rule-based energy management strategy for a Hybrid Electric Vehicle, structured for predictive driving controls based on external information knowledge

Recently, the interest of the automotive market for hybrid vehicles has increased due to the more restrictive pollutants emissions legislation and to the necessity of decreasing the fossil fuel consumption, since such solution allows a consistent improvement of the vehicle global efficiency. The term hybridization regards the energy flow in the powertrain of a vehicle: a standard vehicle has, usually, only one energy source and one energy tank; instead, a hybrid vehicle has at least two energy sources. In most cases, the prime mover is an internal combustion engine (ICE) while the auxiliary energy source can be mechanical, electrical, pneumatic or hydraulic. It is expected from the control unit of a hybrid vehicle the use of the ICE in high efficiency working zones and to shut it down when it is more convenient, while using the EMG at partial loads and as a fast torque response during transients. However, the battery state of charge may represent a limitation for such a strategy. That’s the reason why, in most cases, energy management strategies are based on the State Of Charge, or SOC, control. Several studies have been conducted on this topic and many different approaches have been illustrated. The purpose of this dissertation is to develop an online (usable on-board) control strategy in which the operating modes are defined using an instantaneous optimization method that minimizes the equivalent fuel consumption of a hybrid electric vehicle. The equivalent fuel consumption is calculated by taking into account the total energy used by the hybrid powertrain during the propulsion phases. The first section presents the hybrid vehicles characteristics. The second chapter describes the global model, with a particular focus on the energy management strategies usable for the supervisory control of such a powertrain. The third chapter shows the performance of the implemented controller on a NEDC cycle compared with the one obtained with the original control strategy.

Digital design of an EPC Gen2 controller for enhanced RFID tags

This thesis presents an improvement of the long range battery-less UHF RFID platform for sensor applications which is based on the open source Wireless Identification and Sensing Platform (WISP) project. The purpose of this work is to design a digital logic that performs the RFID EPC gen2 protocol communication, is able to acquire information by sensors and provide an accurate estimation of tag location ensuring low energy consumption. This thesis will describe the hardware architecture on which the digital logic was inserted, the Verilog code developed, the methods by which the digital logic was tested and an explorative study of chip synthesis on Cadence.

Neural Network Based UAV Fault Tolerant Control with Aerodynamic Disturbance Estimation and Compensation

In this thesis, the problem of controlling a quadrotor UAV is considered. It is done by presenting an original control system, designed as a combination of Neural Networks and Disturbance Observer, using a composite learning approach for a system of the second order, which is a novel methodology in literature. After a brief introduction about the quadrotors, the concepts needed to understand the controller are presented, such as the main notions of advanced control, the basic structure and design of a Neural Network, the modeling of a quadrotor and its dynamics. The full simulator, developed on the MATLAB Simulink environment, used throughout the whole thesis, is also shown. For the guidance and control purposes, a Sliding Mode Controller, used as a reference, it is firstly introduced, and its theory and implementation on the simulator are illustrated. Finally the original controller is introduced, through its novel formulation, and implementation on the model. The effectiveness and robustness of the two controllers are then proven by extensive simulations in all different conditions of external disturbance and faults.

Supporto alla creazione e gestione di una rete virtualizzata basata su controller Ryu

L'erogazione dei servizi informatici tramite cloud è ormai una delle soluzioni più in voga nel mercato odierno, tant'è che, analizzando le statistiche fornite dalle piattaforme principali, anche il futuro sembra andare proprio in quella direzione. Quest'evoluzione avrà un forte impatto persino nelle telecomunicazioni, dove le tecniche di virtualizzazione e softwarizzazione vengono già oggi impiegate per facilitare la gestione delle infrastrutture di rete, creando le cosiddette SDN (Software Defined Network). I provider che scelgono di adottare queste soluzioni ottengono un elevato grado di flessibilità dei propri servizi, facilitando notevolmente lo sviluppo di nuove funzionalità, grazie alla presenza di controller esterni a cui vengono demandati gli aspetti di gestione della rete stessa. In uno scenario di questo tipo è fondamentale che gli strumenti volti allo studio e alla sperimentazione di reti software-based siano in grado di stare al passo con i tempi, utilizzando tecnologie all'avanguardia ed accessibili anche agli utenti che si interfacciano per la prima volta con queste metodologie. Perché questo sia possibile è necessario che telecomunicazioni e sviluppo software, aspetti storicamente appartenenti a due mondi dell'informatica paralleli, si uniscano. Ad oggi gli strumenti che permettono di operare su SDN sono innumerevoli, ma spesso accomunati dalla mancanza di qualsivoglia interfaccia grafica, restringendo l'utenza di riferimento ad un gruppo ancor più di nicchia, escludendo gli utilizzatori alle prime armi. L'obiettivo di questo progetto è proporre uno strumento alternativo, basato su Ryu, che permetta all’utente di creare, configurare e gestire secondo le proprie esigenze una rete virtuale, attraverso un’interfaccia grafica e un simulatore interattivo per controllare e visualizzare lo stato dei dispositivi connessi. Infine, verranno analizzati i vantaggi didattici ottenuti dall'impiego dell'applicativo rispetto alle metodologie classiche.