Nov 11, 2015 - article focuses on the design of sys- tems in which a ... human-robot team design in a system- theoretic ... âCSS Newsâ discusses the new oral.
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about this issue
Control of Teams
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his issue of IEEE Control Systems Magazine (CSM) addresses teaming, an important part of many multiagent systems, with a particular focus on coordination between au-
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MCS.2015.2470935 Date of publication: 11 November 2015
tonomous vehicles and between humans and robots. The first feature is “Heavy-Duty Vehicle Platooning for Sustainable Freight Transportation,” by Assad Alam, Bart Besselink, Valerio Turri, Jonas Mårtensson, and Karl Henrik Johansson. This article consid-
ers the road freight transportation sector, which faces dramatic challenges resulting from increasing fuel prices and constraints on future greenhouse gas emissions. Advanced cooperative control and optimization techniques can be used to address these challenges,
Contributors
Assad Alam, Bart Besselink, Jonas Mårtensson, Valerio Turri, and Karl H. Johansson (from left to right) evaluating a vehicle platoon control algorithm and discovering a disturbance on the road.
Grant Taylor
Amit Surana
8 IEEE CONTROL SYSTEMS MAGAZINE » DECEMBER 2015
Jeffrey Peters
Miguel Eckstein
Vaibhav Srivastava
Francesco Bullo
leading to enhanced safety and higher energy efficiency. The article focuses on one approach, called heavy-duty vehicle platooning, in which a group of vehicles are spaced closely together, thereby reducing air drag and fuel consumption. The authors first provide a vision of a multilayer architecture for a future freight transportation system based on collaborative transport planning and vehicle platooning. They then detail a platoon control system that builds on standard cruise control and adaptive cruise con-
trol and propose a new, cooperative adaptive cruise control capability. An important part of the article is the experimental evaluation of the approach using three heavy-duty vehicles that are operated on public roads with varying road grade, in the presence of traffic, and varying weather conditions. This evaluation shows that platooning can signifi cantly reduce the fuel consumption of the platoon and that, since road grade has a large impact on the fuel usage, more advanced control strategies are
needed to exploit preview information on the road topography. The second feature is “Human Supervisory Control of Robotic Teams” by Jeffrey Peters, Vaibhav Srivastava, Grant Taylor, Amit Surana, Miguel P. Eckstein, and Francesco Bullo. This article focuses on the design of systems in which a human operator is responsible for overseeing autonomous agents and providing feedback based on sensor data. In a typical human supervisory control application, the operator does not directly manipulate autonomous agents but rather indirectly interacts with these components via a central data-processing station. This article studies mixed
Raja Sengupta
Saurabh Amin
Anuradha Annaswamy
Scott Moura
Mark Minor
Vishwanath Bulusu
DECEMBER 2015 « IEEE CONTROL SYSTEMS MAGAZINE 9
human-robot team design in a systemtheoretic setting using an example of a surveillance mission. The authors survey the key elements of human decision making, including evidence aggregation, situational awareness, fatigue, and memory effects. Models for these elements are combined into a single coherent model for human decision making in the particular case of a two-alternative choice task. That model is then used to design efficient attention allocation policies for the human operator. The article concludes with a discussion of the key challenges in this area, which provides numerous insights on new research directions. “From the Editor” reflects on my first year as editor-in-chief of this magazine, with some thoughts and suggestions of ideas for future submissions to it. In the “President’s Message,” Elena Valcher provides some perspectives on “Discovering China” during her recent trips to Qingdao, Hangzhou, and Shenyang for various conferences. ”CSS News” discusses the new oral history program being developed by IEEE, with links to several interviews of prominent IEEE Control Systems Society (CSS) members. The “Awards” column presents Bruce A. Francis’s ac-
ceptance speech for the IEEE Control Systems Award, which he accepted on June 30, 2015 in Chicago, Illinois. “People in Control” has interviews with incoming CSS President Francis (Frank) Doyle, recently elected IEEE Fellow Spyros Reveliotis, and outgoing CSS Director of Operations Warren Dixon. “Member Activities” discusses the activities of Women in Control, a standing committee within the CSS Member Activities Board. “Publication Activities” introduces the two new CSM associate editors, C.A. Rabbath and HeSuan Hu. “Technical Activities” provides an update from Sarangapani Jagannathan on the IEEE CSS Technical Committee on Intelligent Control and from Raja Sengupta, Saurabh Amin, Anuradha Annaswamy, Scott Moura, and Vishwanath Bulusu on the IEEE CSS Technical Committee on Smart Cities. “Conference Reports” has summaries of the 23rd Mediterranean Control Conference, which was held in Torremolinos, Spain, June 16–19, 2015; the 2015 American Control Conference, which was held July 1–3 in Chicago, Illinois; the 27th Chinese Control and Decision Conference, which was held in Qingdao, China, May 23–25, 2015; and the Fourth Inter-
national Conference on Systems and Control, which took place April 28–30, 2015 in Sousse, Tunisia. “CSS Business” includes the minutes and consent agenda of the CSS Board of Governors meeting held in Chicago, Illinois, in July 2015, as well as the IEEE CSS Bylaws. Among the regular columns, “25 Years Ago” revisits the article “Parameter Learning for Performance Adaptation” by Mark D. Peek and Panos J. Antsaklis, which discusses using learning to improve the resiliency of a control system. “Conference Calendar” lists upcoming conferences sponsored or cosponsored by the IEEE CSS. “Book Announcements” provides summaries of books recently published in the control field. “Obituaries” presents memories of Nazli E. Kahveci by Petros Ioannou. “Book Reviews” provides a discussion by Mark Minor of the new edition of Nonlinear Control by Hassan K. Khalil. “On the Lighter Side” completes the four-part series on control-related haikus. This installment considers robust control. Jonathan P. How
Assessing Stability
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he object of this paper is to outline a stability theory for input–output problems using functional methods. More particularly, the aim is to derive open-loop conditions for the boundedness and continuity of feedback systems, without, at the beginning, placing restrictions on linearity or time invariance. It will be recalled that, in the special case of a linear time invariant feedback system, stability can be assessed using Nyquist’s criterion; roughly speaking, stability depends on the mounts by which signals are amplified and delayed in flowing around the loop. An attempt is made here to show that similar considerations govern the behavior of feedback systems in general—that stability of nonlinear time-varying feedback systems can often be assessed from certain gross features of input–output behavior, which are related to amplification and delay. — George Zames “On the Input-Output Stability of Time-Varying Nonlinear Feedback Systems Part One: Conditions Derived Using Concepts of Loop Gain, Conicity, and Positivity,” IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, vol. 11, no. 2, pp. 228–238, April 1966
10 IEEE CONTROL SYSTEMS MAGAZINE » DECEMBER 2015
