This paper presents a robust controller design with disturbance decoupling and rejection of a two-degree-of-freedom (2-DOF) Inertially Stabilized Platform (ISP). The objective of these mechanisms is to stabilize the line of sight (LOS) of imaging sensors pointing towards a specific target. There is currently tremendous interest in ISP applications in marine systems. Such a harsh environment subjects the imaging sensors to multiple disturbances, which requires the design of robust control strategies to enhance the performances of ISP systems. The controller designed in this study is a double active controller composed of an inner compensator, and a feedback controller designed based on the $H_{\infty }$ framework. The main advantage of the proposed controller is that it can be implemented in real time, with lower computational complexity and good performance. In this paper, a comparative experimental study was conducted between the designed controller and an integral sliding-mode controller (ISMC). The comparison was achieved through two major tasks of ISP systems: motion tracking and target tracking.

This paper presents the design and modeling of a flying-type fire extinguishing system. Fire accidents present very hazardous environments, and firefighters are in danger of losing their lives while putting out the fire. Strict safety measures should be considered to guarantee safe working conditions for firefighters, which is not the case every time, as fatalities and casualties are still being recorded. For this reason, a novel fire extinguishing system is proposed to provide more safe firefighting and survivor searches. The system studied in this paper is a pilot model that consists of a water jet-based actuation system to control the flying motion of the robot. The dynamic model of this flying robot is derived using the actuation forces, water jet system characteristics, and related information. The mathematical system model is detailed, a sliding-mode control system and a proportional-integral-derivative controller are designed, and comparative simulation tests are carried out.

This article proposes a novel adaptive super-twisting sliding mode control scheme with a time-delay estimation technique (ASTSMC-TDE) to control the yaw angle of a single ducted-fan unmanned aerial vehicle system. Such systems are highly nonlinear; hence, the proposed control scheme is a combination of several control schemes; super-twisting sliding mode, TDE technique to estimate the nonlinear factors of the system, and an adaptive sliding mode. The tracking error of the ASTSMC-TDE is guaranteed to be uniformly ultimately bounded using Lyapunov stability theory. Moreover, to enhance the versatility and the practical feasibility of the proposed control scheme, a comparison study between the proposed controller and a proportional-integral-derivative controller (PID) is conducted. The comparison is achieved through two different scenarios: a normal mode and an abnormal mode. Simulation and experimental tests are carried out to provide an in-depth investigation of the performance of the proposed ASTSMC-TDE control system.

This paper proposes a new method to control the pose of a camera mounted on a two-axis gimbal system for visual servoing applications. In these applications, the camera should be stable while its line-of-sight points at a target located within the camera’s field of view. One of the most challenging aspects of these systems is the coupling in the gimbal kinematics as well as the imaging geometry. Such factors must be considered in the control system design process to achieve better control performances. The novelty of this study is that the couplings in both mechanism’s kinematics and imaging geometry are decoupled simultaneously by a new technique, so popular control methods can be easily implemented, and good tracking performances are obtained. The proposed control configuration includes a calculation of the gimbal’s desired motion taking into account the coupling influence, and a control law derived by the backstepping procedure. Simulation and experimental studies were conducted, and their results validate the efficiency of the proposed control system. Moreover, comparison studies are conducted between the proposed control scheme, the image-based pointing control, and the decoupled control. This proves the superiority of the proposed approach that requires fewer measurements and results in smoother transient responses.

This paper proposes a novel nonlinear control approach for a two-axis gimbal to achieve accurate real-time tracking performance in maritime surveillance applications. For this objective, the control system must overcome system complexities and limitations, including nonlinear dynamics, coupled Euler angle-based measurements, and delay time constraints. The nonlinear backstepping controller was designed, taking into consideration the nonlinearities and system couplings to preserve the system stability. Then, an extra backstep was incorporated to minimize the control errors due to the delay time. The proposed control scheme enhances the tracking performances and expands the system’s bandwidth, which is validated in the simulations and experimental studies in comparison with a super-twisting sliding mode controller introduced in a previous study.

This paper presents a robust controller design of payload position control for an offshore crane facing disturbance and parametric uncertainties. The offshore operations with cranes while lifting and lowering a payload can be dangerous since safety and efficiency are affected by waves, wind and ocean currents. Such harsh sea conditions put the offshore crane and payload through unwanted disturbances and parametric uncertainties, which requires a robust control system to guarantee reliable performance of these systems. In this paper, we detail a controller designed based on uniformly ultimately bounded (UUB) theory, combined with the input-output linearization control technique (IOLC). The stability of the closed-loop system under the UUB conditions is analyzed using the energy-based Lyapunov function. To evaluate the control performance of the proposed controller, along with an IOLC and an integral sliding mode controller (ISMC), a comparison study is also conducted. The control performance and efficiency of the proposed controller are validated through experiments on an offshore crane model.