The report discusses dynamical systems approach to problems in robust control of possibly time varying linear systems, problems in vision and visually guided control and finally applications of these control techniques to intelligent navigation with a mobile platform. Robust design of a controller for a time varying system essentially deals with the problem of synthesizing a controller that can adapt to sudden changes in the parameters of the plant and can maintain stability. The approach presented in the report is to design a compensator that simultaneously stabilizes each and every possible modes of the plant as the parameters undergo sudden and unexpected changes. Such changes can in fact be detected by a visual sensor and hence visually guided control problems are studied as a natural consequence. The problem here is to detect parameters of the plant and maintain stability in the closed loop using a c.c.d camera as a sensor. The main result discussed in the report is the role of perspective systems theory that was developed in order to analyze such a detection and control problem. The robust control algorithms and the visually guided control algorithms are applied in the context of a PUMA 560 robot arm control where the goal is to visually locate a moving part on a mobile turntable. Such problems are of paramount importance in manufacturing with a certain lack of structure. Sensor guided control problems are extended to problems in robot navigation using a NOMADIC mobile platform with a c.c.d and a laser range finder as sensors. The location and map building problems are studied with the objective of navigation in an unstructured terrain.
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