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Previous research on finite/fixed/predefined-time control and its relevant sliding mode structures focus on forcing a system state (vector) to converge within a certain time moment, regardless of how each state element converges. 'Time-Synchronized Control and Applications for Autonomous Systems' introduces a control problem with unique finite/fixed/predefined-time stability considerations, namely time-synchronized stability, where at the same time, all the system state elements converge to the origin. This book also delves into the wide-ranging applications of time-synchronized control in various practical control systems, including but not limited to spacecraft attitude control/tracking, satellite orbit control, dynamic positioning of vessels, cooperative control of autonomous vehicles, etc. In addition, a diverse array of control system models are considered, encompassing disturbed systems, chaotic systems, multi-input multi-output (MIMO) systems, nonlinear systems, and Euler-Lagrange systems. Through an in-depth exploration of these specific cases, this book showcases the versatility and effectiveness of time-synchronized control methods across different domains, providing readers with a comprehensive perspective on their practical utility.• Presents practical application of time-synchronized control.• Includes detailed code examples, facilitating the application and replication of control system designs in real-world scenarios.• Provides rigorous mathematical derivations and proofs, ensuring a strong foundation in control theory and offering readers a comprehensive understanding of the motivation and mechanism behind these methods.

Inspired by the community behaviors of animals and humans, cooperative control has been intensively studied by numerous researchers in recent years. Cooperative control aims to build a network system collectively driven by a global objective function in a distributed or centralized communication network and shows great application potential in a wide domain. From the perspective of cybernetics in network system cooperation, one of the main tasks is to design the formation control scheme for multiple intelligent unmanned systems, facilitating the achievements of hazardous missions – e.g., deep space exploration, cooperative military operation, and collaborative transportation. Various challenges in such real-world applications are driving the proposal of advanced formation control design, which is to be addressed to bring academic achievements into real industrial scenarios. This book extends the performance of formation control beyond classical dynamic or stationary geometric configurations, focusing on formation maneuverability that enables cooperative systems to keep suitable spacial configurations during agile maneuvers. This book embarks on an adventurous journey of maneuverable formation control in constrained space with limited resources, to accomplish the exploration of an unknown environment. The investigation of the real-world challenges, including model uncertainties, measurement inaccuracy, input saturation, output constraints, and spatial collision avoidance, brings the value of this book into the practical industry, rather than being limited to academics.

Previous research on fixed/finite-time sliding-mode control focuses on forcing a system state (vector) to converge within a certain time moment, regardless of how each state element converges. This book introduces a control problem with unique finite/fixed-time stability considerations, namely time-synchronized stability, where at the same time, all the system state elements converge to the origin, and fixed-time-synchronized stability, where the upper bound of the synchronized settling time is invariant with any initial state. Accordingly, sufficient conditions for (fixed-) time-synchronized stability are presented. These stability formulations grant essentially advantageous performance when a control system (with diversified subsystems) is expected to accomplish multiple actions synchronously, e.g., grasping with a robotic hand, multi-agent simultaneous cooperation, etc. Further, the analytical solution of a (fixed) time-synchronized stable system is obtained and discussed. Applications to linear systems, disturbed nonlinear systems, and network systems are provided. In addition, comparisons with traditional fixed/finite-time sliding mode control are suitably detailed to showcase the full power of (fixed-) time-synchronized control.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Social Robotics, ICSR 2021, held in Singapore, Singapore, in November 2021. The conference was held as a hybrid event. The 64 full papers and 15 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 114 submissions. The conference presents topics on humans and intelligent robots and on the integration of robots into the fabric of our society. The theme of the 2021 edition was "Robotics in our everyday lives", emphasizing on the increasing importance of robotics in human daily living.