Command governor for constrained switched systems with scheduled model transition dwell times

In this paper, a switched control architecture for constrained control systems is presented. The strategy is based on command governor ideas that are here specialized to ‘optimally’ schedule switching events on the plant dynamics for improving control performance at the expense of low computational burdens. The significance of the method mainly lies in its capability to avoid constraints violation and loss of stability regardless of any configuration change occurrence in the plant/constraint structure. To this end, the concept of model transition dwell time is used within the proposed control framework to formally define the minimum time necessary to enable a switching event under guaranteed conditions on the overall stability and constraint fulfilment. Simulation results on a simple linear system and on a Cessna 182 aircraft model show the effectiveness of the proposed strategy. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.