Today, planning and control of logistic processes on automobile terminals are generally executed by centralised logistics systems, which in many cases cannot cope with the high requirements for flexible order processing due to increasing dynamics and complexity. The main business processes on automobile terminals – notification of vehicles by automobile manufacturer, transport to automobile ter...

In this paper, a local feedback control strategy is devised to drive a group of nonholonomic unicycle-type vehicles to a rendezvous point. The proposed control law is continuous and time-invariant. Using tools from graph theory, convergence and ultimate boundedness properties of the overall system are examined. Similar to the results for the rendezvous problem for vehicles governed by linear dy...

Traditionally, deliberative reasoning methods based on a world model have been used to guide Autonomous Vehicles. Nevertheless, due to serious problems when dealing with complex and changing environments the alternative approach of reactive architectures appeared, directly coupling perception and action without any world representation. This paper describes the characteristics and variants of r...

Robust tracking of vehicles under uncertain, noisy, and discontinuous positioning is a significant part of autonomous navigation in unknown environments. This article suggests two methods for track control, where the initial parameters of the on-line control are physically explainable, the resulting track as well as the control parameters are asymptotically converging and glitches in the locali...

The modern flight control systems are complex since they have a non-linear nature. Also, modern aerospace vehicles are expected to have non-conventional flight envelopes and, in order to operate in uncertain environments, they must guarantee a high level of robustness and adaptability. A Neural Networks controller can be used in applications with manned or unmanned aerial vehicles. The paper sh...

Agents guided by synthetic pheromones can imitate the dynamics of insects. These systems are well suited to problems such as the control of unmanned robotic vehicles. We have developed a model for controlling robotic vehicles in combat missions using synthetic pheromones. In the course of our experimentation, we have identified the need for proper tuning of the algorithms to get acceptable perf...

This paper describes an algorithm to calculate near-optimal minimum time trajectories for four wheeled omnidirectional vehicles, which can be used as part of a high-level path planner. The algorithm is based on a relaxed optimal control problem. It takes limited friction and vehicle dynamics into account, as encountered in high-performance omnidirectional vehicles. The low computational complex...

We plan to build a testbed consisting of 8-10 mobile vehicles with embedded computing and communications capability for use in testing new approaches for command and control across dynamic networks. The proposed system will allow testing of a variety of communications-related technologies that are relevant to future DoD systems, including distributed command and control algorithms, dynamically ...

Unmanned, underwater vehicles have been developed considerably in recent years. Remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) are increasingly used for routine inspection and maintenance tasks but have a range that is limited by the umbilical cable. For long range operations, such as oceanographic exploration and surveying, autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) are emerging which have on-board power and ar...

In this work, we build on our earlier results and accomplishments in understanding, modeling and controlling underwater glider dynamics (YIP Grant # N00014-98-1-0649). The focus is on dedicated gliding vehicles that have the ability to change mass (or volume) for buoyancy control and to redistribute mass (and possibly control a rudder) for attitude control. The framework consists of a dynamical...