Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, Inc.

Carrier Corporation

Mitsubishi Electric Corporation

Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs.

Mitsubishi Research Laboratories, Inc.

Scott Bortoff

Christopher Laughman

Yebin Wang

Vijay Shilpiekandula

Daniel J Burns

Stefano Di Cairano

Hongtao Qiao

William Yerazunis

Mouhacine Benosman

Abraham Goldsmith

John C Barnwell, Iii

Dan J Burns

Matthew E Brand

Harshad S Sane

Ankush Chakrabarty

Sohrab Haghighat

Eric Royet

Joseph M Katz

William T Vetterling

Bingnan Wang

Koichiro Ueda

Rien Quirynen

Yiming Zhao

Alan Sullivan

Devesh Jha

Chungwei Lin

Claus Danielson

Richard C Waters

Olivier Josserand

Han Yu

Siddarth Jain

Jin Dai

Oliver Josserand

Neera Jain

Yu Jiang

Manohar Srikanth

The present disclosure provides a system and a method for controlling a motion of a robot from a starting point to a target point within a bounded space with a floorplan including one or multiple obstacles. The method includes solving for an electric potential in a bounded virtual space formed by scaling the floorplan of the bounded space with the one or multiple obstacles and applying charge to at least one bound of the bounded virtual space while treating the scaled obstacles as metallic surfaces with a constant potential value, wherein the electric potential provides multiple equipotential curves within the bounded virtual space. The method further includes selecting an equipotential curve with a potential value different from a potential value of an obstacle equipotential curve, determining a motion path based on the selected equipotential curve, and controlling the motion of the robot based on the determined motion path.

System and method for controlling a motion of a robot

A system for controlling or optimizing the performance of a vapor compression system by modifying the actuator commands via an output interface, that realizes thermofluid property functions and their derivatives as spline functions which are represented in a coordinate system that is aligned with a fluid saturation curve. The system includes an interface configured to receive measurement data from sensors, a memory configured to store thermofluid property data and computer-executable programs including a B-spline method, and a processor for performing the computer-implemented method. The processor is configured to take as input two thermofluid property variables, and compute a coordinate transformation in which one axis of the coordinates is aligned with the liquid and vapor saturation curves. In the saturation-curve aligned coordinates, a spline function represents the thermofluid property function, with coefficients and knots stored in memory. The spline function is constructed in a manner such that derivatives of the thermofluid property function may be discontinuous across the saturation curve.

System and method for calculation of thermofluid properties using saturation curve-aligned coordinates

A controller for controlling a vapor compression system is provided. The controller is configured to control an operation of the VCS with different combinations of setpoints for different actuators of the VCS to estimate a cost of operation of the VCS for each of the different combinations of setpoints, and compute, using a Bayesian optimization of the combinations of setpoints and their corresponding estimated costs of operation, a probabilistic surrogate model, wherein the probabilistic surrogate model defines at least first two order moments of the cost of operation in the probabilistic mapping. The controller is further configured to select an optimal combination of setpoints having the largest likelihood of being a global minimum at the surrogate model according to an acquisition function of the first two order moments of the cost of operation.

Controlling vapor compression system using probabilistic surrogate model

A control system for controlling a set of actuators of a system. The control system comprising a switcher configured to select a subset of setpoints from a set of setpoints that control the corresponding set of actuators. An extremum-seeking controller (ESC) configured to perturb a subset of setpoints at each iteration based on a probabilistic distribution of partial gradients of a cost function relating values of the subset of setpoints to a cost of operation of the system. A stochastic gradient estimator is configured to estimate a full gradient of the cost function and update the estimation of the full gradient based on the probabilistic distribution of the partial gradients generated at each ESC iteration. A feedback controller is configured to drive a state of the subset of actuators of the system towards the corresponding perturbed subset of setpoints.

Extremum seeking control with stochastic gradient estimation

Systems and methods for a vapor compression system including primary actuators, secondary actuators, primary sensors that provide a primary set of system outputs, and secondary sensors that provide a secondary set of system outputs. A primary controller receives the primary set of system outputs, and produces a primary set of control inputs for the primary actuators, to regulate one or more zone temperatures to set-points and to regulate one or more critical process variables to set-points. A secondary controller receives the secondary set of system outputs, and produces a secondary set of control inputs, to minimize an overall system power consumption. The secondary inputs may include set-points to the primary controller. The primary outputs may include estimates of critical process variables that are used as inputs to the secondary controller.

System and method for power optimizing control of multi-zone heat pumps

A vapor compression system includes a heat transfer system including an arrangement of components moving a refrigerant through a vapor compression cycle to condition a controlled environment and a refrigerant management system including at least one expansion device regulating an amount of the refrigerant in the vapor compression cycle. The vapor compression system also includes a controller including a processor jointly controlling the expansion device and at least one component of the heat transfer system according to a metric of performance of the vapor compression system.

System and method for controlling refrigerant in vapor compression system

A thermal conditioning system for controlling a thermal comfort of an occupant of a building includes a vapor compression system to control an air temperature in the building space and a radiant system to control a radiant temperature in the building space. The system also includes a feedback controller to generate a first control signal for controlling a state of the vapor compression system to reduce an error between a set-point air temperature and a current air temperature in the building space and includes a feedforward controller to generate a second control signal control for controlling a state of the radiant system based on the state of the vapor compression system.

System and method for thermal comfort control

A system for controlling a motion of a vehicle from an initial state to a target state includes a path planner to determine a discontinuous curvature path connecting the initial state with the target state by a sequential composition of driving patterns. The discontinuous curvature path is collision-free within a tolerance envelope centered on the discontinuous curvature path. The system further includes a path transformer to locate and replace at least one treatable primitive in the discontinuous curvature path with a corresponding continuous curvature segment to form a modified path remaining within the tolerance envelope. Each treatable primitive is a predetermined pattern of elementary paths. The system further includes a controller to control the motion of the vehicle according to the modified path.

Motion controller for real-time continuous curvature path planning

A method controls a vapor compression system including a variable speed compressor. A desired discharge temperature of the compressor is determined using a mapping between values of the discharge temperature of the compressor and values of speed of the compressor and outdoor air temperature. A transition function for transitioning a current discharge temperature to the desired discharge temperature is determined, such that the transition function is continuous and a rate of change of the transition function is limited. Next, a valve of the vapor compression system is controlled such that the discharge temperature is transitioned to the desired discharge temperature based on the transition function.

System and method for controlling vapor compression systems

A method controls an operation of a laser processing machine with redundant actuators including a first actuator and a second actuator. The method determines a feasible region for states of the first actuator and states of a reference trajectory of the first actuator defined by constraints of the laser processing machine, constraints on the reference trajectory and constraints on a range of motion of the second actuator. The method selects a subset of the feasible region, such that for any state of the first actuator and any state of the reference trajectory within the subset, there is an admissible control maintaining the state of the first actuator within the subset of the feasible region for admissible future states of the reference trajectory, and selects an admissible control action for controlling the operation such that the state of the first actuator remains in the subset of the feasible region.

Control of redundant laser processing machines

A controller controls a first air-conditioning system and a second air-conditioning system having separate refrigerant circuits, but arranged for conditioning a common space. The controller includes a multi-variable regulator to determine control signals for controlling operations of first components of the first and the second refrigerant circuits to reduce jointly and concurrently an environmental error between setpoint and measured values of environment in the common space. The controller also includes at least two single-variable regulators to receive operational errors between setpoint and measured values of an operation of a second component of the first and the second refrigerant circuits. The controller separately determines control signals for controlling the operation of different refrigerant circuits that reduce the operational errors. The controller also includes a lookup table that stores values for other inputs of the systems that improve its performance, and which selects specific input values for both systems according to the outputs of the multi-variable and/or single variable regulators. The controller includes an electrical circuit for controlling the first and the second air-conditioning systems according to the determined control signals.

Coordinated operation of multiple space-conditioning systems

A multi-zone vapor compression system (MZ-VCS) includes a compressor connected to a set of heat exchangers controlling environments in a set of zones. A supervisory controller includes a processor configured for optimizing a cost function subject to constraints on an operation of the MZ-VCS to produce a set of values of the thermal capacity requested for the set of heat exchangers to achieve setpoint temperatures in the corresponding zones. The supervisory controller is a model predictive controller for determining the set of control inputs using a model of the MZ-VCS including a linear relationship between the thermal capacity of each heat exchanger and the temperature in a corresponding zone controlled by the heat exchanger. A set of capacity controllers, wherein there is one capacity controller for each heat exchanger, such that each capacity controller is configured for controlling the corresponding heat exchanger to achieve the requested thermal capacity.

System and method for controlling multi-zone vapor compression systems

A method of coordinated flow control in a heat exchanger system includes adjusting a position of a variable actuator of the heat exchanger system if an associated monitored temperature of the heat exchanger system needs adjustment, determining if the adjusted position of the variable actuator is within a predetermined range of positions, adjusting a position of a discrete actuator of the heat exchanger system if the adjusted position of the variable actuator is not within the predetermined range of positions, and resetting the position of the variable actuator in response to adjusting the position of the discrete actuator.

Coordinated flow control

Angular speed of a rotor of an induction motor without an encoder for rotor position and speed sensing is controlled by first sensing stator currents and voltages of the induction motor. A dynamic gain estimator is designed by applying a state transformation to a model of the induction motor. A states of the induction motor is estimated by applying the dynamic gain estimator to the currents and the voltages, and then the state is used to control the angular speed of the rotor of the induction motor.

Method and system for controlling angular speeds of motors in speed sensorless induction motors

A vapor compression system includes a heat exchanger having an inlet header pipe connected to a set of paths for passing refrigerant to condition a controlled zone. The inlet header pipe splits the refrigerant into different paths. An amount of the refrigerant entering the inlet header pipe is controlled by a valve. The vapor compression system also includes a set of sensors for measuring temperatures of the refrigerant in each path of the set of paths and a controller including a processor for determining a position of the valve based on the measurements of at least one sensor from the set of sensors and a thermal capacity requested for the heat exchanger.

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Brookline, MA, United States of America

Scott Bortoff