A robust motion control system is essential for the linear motor (LM)-based direct drive to provide high speed and high-precision performance. This paper studies a systematic control design method using fast nonsingular terminal sliding mode (FNTSM) for an LM positioner. Compared with the conventional nonsingular terminal sliding mode control, the FNTSM control can guarantee a faster convergence rate of the tracking error in the presence of system uncertainties including payload variations, friction, external disturbances, and measurement noises. Moreover, its control input is inherently continuous, which accordingly avoids the undesired control chattering problem. We further discuss the selection criteria of the controller parameters for the LM to deal with the system dynamic constraints and performance tradeoffs. Finally, we present a robust model-free velocity estimator based on the only available position measurements with quantization noises such that the estimated velocity can be used for feedback signal to the FNTSM controller. Experimental results demonstrate the practical implementation of the FNTSM controller and verify its robustness of more accurate tracking and faster disturbance rejection compared with a conventional NTSM controller and a linear H _∞ controller.

Payload variations, friction, and external disturbances deteriorate the control performance of linear motor (LM) positioners. To provide high-speed and high-precision performance for the LM, an adaptive recursive terminal sliding mode (ARTSM) controller is proposed in this paper. For the controller, a fast nonsingular terminal sliding function and a recursive integral terminal sliding function are developed in a recursive structure such that the sliding surfaces are arrived successively and ultimately the tracking error can converge to zero in a finite time. Furthermore, by setting an appropriate initial value for the integral element of the ARTSM controller, the control system is enforced to start on the sliding surface at the initial time such that the reaching time is reduced. Stability analysis is presented to prove the finite-time convergence and zero tracking error of the closed-loop system under the proposed ARTSM controller. Experiment results also demonstrate the effectiveness of the controller in term of significantly reduced tracking errors and faster disturbance rejection in comparison with a recently reported fast nonsingular terminal sliding mode (FNTSM) controller for the LM positioner.

In this paper, the modeling of steer-by-wire (SbW) systems is further studied, and a sliding mode control scheme for the SbW systems with uncertain dynamics is developed. It is shown that an SbW system, from the steering motor to the steered front wheels, is equivalent to a second-order system. A sliding mode controller can then be designed based on the bound information of uncertain system parameters, uncertain self-aligning torque, and uncertain torque pulsation disturbances, in the sense that not only the strong robustness with respect to large and nonlinear system uncertainties can be obtained but also the front-wheel steering angle can converge to the handwheel reference angle asymptotically. Both the simulation and experimental results are presented in support of the excellent performance and effectiveness of the proposed scheme.

The control of automobile electronic throttle (AET) systems is a challenging task owing to multiple nonlinearities, i.e., transmission friction, gear backlash, limp-home spring set, and external load disturbance. In this paper, a practical tracking control scheme of an AET system is developed using a continuous fast nonsingular terminal sliding mode (CFNTSM) technique based on uncertainty observer. By using the prescribed CFNTSM surface and fast terminal sliding mode-based reaching element, the proposed control implementation guarantees the fast error convergence characteristic and high tracking accuracy under parameter uncertainties and perturbations. Furthermore, due to the adoption of the finite-time exact observer (FEO) for the lumped uncertainty estimation in the controller, the ease of the selection of the control gains is well-achieved since they only depend on the uncertainty estimation error. The closed-loop stability and finite-time convergence are presented based on the Lyapunov stability theory. Experimental verifications are conducted to validate the remarkable performance of the proposed control, in terms of the step and sinusoidal tracking as well as anti-disturbance ability.

In recent years, with the rapid development of science and technology, agricultural robots have gradually begun to replace humans, to complete various agricultural operations, changing traditional agricultural production methods. Not only is the labor input reduced, but also the production efficiency can be improved, which invariably contributes to the development of smart agriculture. This paper reviews the core technologies used for agricultural robots in non-structural environments. In addition, we review the technological progress of drive systems, control strategies, end-effectors, robotic arms, environmental perception, and other related systems. This research shows that in a non-structured agricultural environment, using cameras and light detection and ranging (LiDAR), as well as ultrasonic and satellite navigation equipment, and by integrating sensing, transmission, control, and operation, different types of actuators can be innovatively designed and developed to drive the advance of agricultural robots, to meet the delicate and complex requirements of agricultural products as operational objects, such that better productivity and standardization of agriculture can be achieved. In summary, agricultural production is developing toward a data-driven, standardized, and unmanned approach, with smart agriculture supported by actuator-driven-based agricultural robots. This paper concludes with a summary of the main existing technologies and challenges in the development of actuators for applications in agricultural robots, and the outlook regarding the primary development directions of agricultural robots in the near future.

Based on the interval type-2 fuzzy (IT2F) approach, this article investigates the fault detection filter design problem for a class of nonhomogeneous higher level Markov jump systems with uncertain transition probabilities. Considering that the mode information of the system cannot be obtained synchronously by the filter, the hidden Markov model can be seen as a detector to handle this asynchronous problem, and the parameter uncertainty can be processed by the IT2F approach with the lower and upper membership functions. Then, the asynchronous IT2F filter is designed to deal with the fault detection problem. Furthermore, the Gaussian transition probability density function is introduced to describe the uncertainty transition probabilities of the system and the filter. Based on the Lyapunov theory, the existence of the designed asynchronous IT2F filter and the dissipativity of the filter error system can be well ensured. In this article, the simulation study on a quarter-car suspension system verifies that the designed asynchronous IT2F filter can detect faults without error alarms.