A genetic algorithm was used to optimize performance of a fuzzy inference system acting as a controller for a magnetically actuated CubeSat. A solely magnetically controlled satellite is a nonlinear, underactuated system for which the uncontrollable axis varies as a function of orbit position and attitude; variation is approximately periodic with orbit position. Therefore, controllability is not guaranteed, making solely magnetic control a less than ideal option for spacecraft requiring a high degree of pointing accuracy or spacecraft subject to relatively large disturbances. However, for small spacecraft, such as CubeSats, with modest pointing and disturbance rejection requirements, solely magnetic actuation is a good option. The genetic-algorithm-tuned fuzzy controller solution was compared to a similar linear quadratic regulator solution that was tuned to minimize the cost function used by the genetic algorithm. Both were optimized with respect to a single set of initial conditions. The genetic-algorithm-tuned fuzzy controller was found to be a lower-cost solution than the linear quadratic regulator for the optimized set of initial conditions. Additionally, a Monte Carlo analysis showed the genetic-algorithm-tuned fuzzy controller tended to settle faster than the linear quadratic regulator over a variety of initial conditions.
Fuzzy logic is used in a variety of applications because of its universal approximator attribute and non-linear characteristics. But, it takes a lot of trial and error to come up with a set of membership functions and rule-base that will effectively work for a specific application. This process could be simplified by using a heuristic search algorithm like Genetic Algorithm (GA). In this paper, genetic fuzzy is applied to the task assignment for cooperating Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) classified as the polygon visiting multiple traveling salesman problem (PVMTSP). The PVMTSP finds a lot of applications including UAV swarm routing. We propose a method of genetic fuzzy clustering that would be specific to PVMTSP problems and hence more efficient compared to k-means and c-means clustering. We developed two different algorithms using genetic fuzzy. One evaluates the distance covered by each UAV to cluster the search-space and the other uses a cost function that approximates the distance covered thus resulting in a reduced computational time. We compare these two approaches to each other as well as to an already benchmarked fuzzy clustering algorithm which is the current state-of-the-art. We also discuss how well our algorithm scales for increasing number of targets. The results are compared for small and large polygon sizes.