Model‐based event‐triggered predictive control for networked systems with communication delays compensation

This paper addresses the model‐based event‐triggered predictive control problem for networked control systems (NCSs). Firstly, we propose a discrete event‐triggered transmission scheme on the sensor node by introducing a quadratic event‐triggering function. Then, on the basis of the aforementioned scheme, a novel class of model‐based event‐triggered predictive control algorithms on the controller node is designed for compensating for the communication delays actively and achieving the desired control performance while using less network resources. Two cases, that is, the value of the communication delay of the first event‐triggered state is less or bigger than the sampling period, are considered separately for certain NCSs, regardless of the communication delays of the subsequent event‐triggered states. The codesign problems of the controller and event‐triggering parameter for the two cases are discussed by using the linear matrix inequality approach and the (switching) Lyapunov functional method. Furthermore, we extended our results to the NCSs with systems uncertainties. Finally, a practical ball and beam system is studied numerically to demonstrate the compensation effect for the communication delays with the proposed novel model‐based event‐triggered predictive control scheme. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Trigger‐based tracking control for a class of uncertain nonlinear systems via an event‐triggered extended state observer

An event‐triggered observer‐based output feedback control issue together with triggered input is investigated for a class of uncertain nonlinear systems subject to unknown external disturbances. Two separate event‐triggered conditions are located on the measurement channel and control channel, respectively. An event‐triggered extended state observer (ETESO) is employed to estimate unmeasurable states and compensate uncertainties and disturbances in real time while it is not required for real‐time output measurement. Then, combined with backstepping method and active disturbance rejection control, an output feedback control scheme is proposed, where an event‐triggered input is developed for reducing the communication rate between the controller and the actuator. The triggered instants are determined by a time‐varying event‐triggered condition. Two simulations, including a numerical example and an permanent‐magnet motor, are illustrated to verify the effectiveness of the proposed schemes.     

Event‐triggered finite‐time reliable control for nonhomogeneous Markovian jump systems

This article investigates the event‐triggered finite‐time reliable control problem for a class of Markovian jump systems with time‐varying transition probabilities, time‐varying actuator faults, and time‐varying delays. First, a Luenberger observer is constructed to estimate the unmeasured system state. Second, by applying an event‐triggered strategy from observer to controller, the frequency of transmission is reduced. Third, based on linear matrix inequality technique and stochastic finite‐time analysis, event‐triggered observer‐based controllers are designed and sufficient conditions are given, which ensure the finite‐time boundedness of the closed‐loop system in an H_∞ sense. Finally, an example is utilized to show the effectiveness of the proposed controller design approach.     

A novel event‐triggered extended state observer for networked control systems subjected to external disturbances

In this paper, the event‐triggered‐based state estimation problem is investigated for a class of nonlinear networked control systems subjected to external disturbances. A novel event‐triggered extended state observer (ESO) is utilized to estimate the so‐called total disturbance, and an output predictor is adopted for the proposed ESO between two consecutive transmission instants. It is also worth pointing out that, in the newly proposed ESO, an event‐triggered mechanism is adopted to update the measurement signal so as to save the communication resource. The sufficient conditions are provided such that the estimation error dynamics is exponentially ultimately bounded. Furthermore, it is proven that the Zeno behavior does not exist for the event‐triggering rules. A number of numerical simulations are conducted to verify the validity of the theoretical results.     

Event‐Triggered Consensus of Nonlinear Multi‐Agent Systems with Unknown External Disturbance

This paper addresses the consensus problem of nonlinear multi‐agent systems with unknown external disturbance. First, a distributed observer is proposed to estimate the state and unknown disturbance of each agent simultaneously. Then, a novel event‐triggered control scheme based on the agent state estimation and disturbance estimation is proposed. Unlike the existing strategies, our event‐triggered conditions depend on agent state estimation and disturbance estimation, which are more effective and practical. Under this observer and control strategy, some sufficient conditions are derived to ensure the consensus of the multi‐agent system with unknown external disturbance. Moreover, the Zeno‐behavior of triggering time sequences is also excluded. Finally, a simulation example is given to verify the theoretical analysis.     

Distributed event‐triggered containment control for dynamical multiagent networks

This paper studies the event‐triggered containment control problem for dynamical multiagent networks of general MIMO linear agents. An event‐triggered containment control strategy is provided, which consists of a control law based on a relative‐state feedback and a distributed triggering rule based on both the relative‐state information and a time‐dependent threshold function. Compared to the previous related works, our main contribution is that the triggering rule depends only on local information of communication networks. It is proved that under the proposed event‐based controller, the containment errors are uniformly ultimately bounded and the Zeno behavior can be excluded. Moreover, when the derivation constant in the threshold function is equal to zero, the containment control problem can be solved. Then, the results are extended to the event‐triggered observer‐based containment controller design.     

Robust feedback stabilization using high‐gain observer via event triggering

In this article, the problem of robust output feedback stabilization of single‐input single‐output nonlinear systems is studied in the event‐triggering framework. In this work, an event‐triggered output feedback law based on a high‐gain observer is constructed, which guarantees the stability of closed‐loop system. First, the high‐gain observer with a triggering scheme is designed to estimate the plant state in the presence of external disturbances subject to any satisfactory accuracy of the estimation error. The observer‐based triggering mechanism decides the transmission of plant output to the observer by observing a certain event condition. Similarly, another triggering mechanism is designed using the estimated state of observer that triggers the control signal to be updated only when it is satisfied. Under this proposed event‐triggering framework, the stability of closed‐loop system is then analyzed. Here, we provide the simplified design technique, in which the high‐gain parameter and the triggering thresholds can be selected independently to achieve any desired bound for the plant trajectory. The results are finally demonstrated through simulation of a numerical example.     

Event‐triggered predictive control for networked control systems with network‐induced delays and packet dropouts

This paper presents an event‐triggered predictive control approach to stabilize a networked control system subject to network‐induced delays and packet dropouts, for which the states are not measurable. An observer‐based event generator is first designed according to the deviation between the state estimation at the current time and the one at the last trigger time. A predictive control scheme with a selector is then proposed to compensate the effect of network‐induced delays and packet dropouts. Sufficient conditions for stabilization of the networked control system are derived by solving linear matrix inequalities and the corresponding gains of the controller and the observer are obtained. It is shown that the event‐triggered implementation is able to realize reduction in communication and save bandwidth resources of feedback channel networks. A simulation example of an inverted pendulum model illustrates the efficacy of the proposed scheme.     

Cooperative output regulation of heterogeneous multiagent systems based on event‐triggered control with fixed and switching topologies

This paper addresses the cooperative output regulation problem of multiagent systems with fixed and switching topologies. Each agent is a heterogeneous linear system, and the output of the exosystem can be available to only a subset of agents. For the agents that can directly access the exosystem, a common observer based on an event‐triggered strategy is constructed to estimate the exogenous signal for feedback control design. For the rest of the agents, estimators based on an event‐triggered mechanism to acquire the estimation value of the exogenous signal are designed under some essential assumptions. A decentralized event‐triggered formulation is considered first by applying a Lyapunov function for a fixed topology. Furthermore, a topology‐dependent triggering condition and the average dwell‐time switching law are deduced simultaneously by using multiple Lyapunov functions for switching topologies. Under communication constraints, we propose observer‐based and estimator‐based feedback controllers to solve the cooperative output regulation problem using available local information among agents. Two examples are finally provided to verify the effectiveness of the proposed theoretical results.     

A Lyapunov‐based small‐gain approach on design of triggering conditions in event‐triggered control systems

This paper studies a Lyapunov‐based small‐gain approach on design of triggering conditions in event‐triggered control systems. The event‐triggered control closed‐loop system is formulated as a hybrid system model. Firstly, by viewing the event‐triggered control closed‐loop system as a feedback connection of two smaller hybrid subsystems, the Lyapunov‐based small‐gain theorems for hybrid systems are applied to design triggering conditions. Then, a new class of triggering condition, the safe, adjustable‐type triggering condition, is proposed to tune the parameters of triggering conditions by practical regulations. This is conducive to break the restriction of the conservation of theoretical results and improve the practicability of event‐triggered control strategy. Finally, a numerical example is given to illustrate the efficiency and the feasibility of the proposed results. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Decentralized event‐triggered control of large‐scale nonlinear systems

This paper studies the decentralized event‐triggered control of large‐scale nonlinear systems. We consider a class of decentralized control systems that are transformable into an interconnection of input‐to‐state stable subsystems with the sampling errors as the inputs. The sampling events for each subsystem are triggered by a threshold signal, and the threshold signals for the subsystems are independent with each other for the decentralized implementation. By appropriately designing the event‐triggering mechanisms, it is shown that infinitely fast sampling can be avoided for each subsystem and asymptotic regulation is achievable for the large‐scale system. The proposed design is based on the ISS small‐gain arguments, and is validated by a benchmark example of controlling two coupled inverted pendulums.     

Disturbance‐prediction–based control of input time delay systems for rejection of unknown frequency disturbances

In this paper, a novel disturbance rejection approach is presented for a class of input time‐delay systems subject to sinusoidal disturbances with unknown frequency. In particular, an auxiliary observer is proposed to represent the periodic disturbance in a parametric uncertainty form, where the unknown factor related to disturbance frequency can be estimated. Furthermore, the correlation between the future disturbance and the auxiliary observer output is analyzed, such that the future disturbances can be predicted and rejected through the input channel. Based on the aforementioned observer and predictor structure, the overall control architecture can be established as a framework of disturbance‐prediction–based control for systems with input time delays, where the conditions on the asymptotic stability of the closed‐loop systems are also derived. Finally, numerical examples are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed control approach.     

Distributed event‐triggered feedback consensus control with state‐dependent threshold for general linear multi‐agent systems

This paper considers the distributed event‐triggered consensus problem for multi‐agent systems with general linear dynamics under undirected graphs. Based on state feedback, we propose a novel distributed event‐triggered consensus controller with state‐dependent threshold for each agent to achieve consensus, without continuous communication in either controller update or triggering condition monitoring. Each agent only needs to monitor its own state continuously to determine if the event is triggered. It is proved that there is no Zeno behavior under the proposed consensus control algorithm. To relax the requirement of the state measurement of each agent, we further propose a novel distributed observer‐based event‐triggered consensus controller to solve the consensus problem in the case with output feedback and prove that there is no Zeno behavior exhibited. Finally, simulation results are given to illustrate the theoretical results. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Event‐triggered observer‐based robust H∞ control for networked control systems with unknown disturbance

In this article, the event‐triggered robust H_∞ control is studied for a class of uncertain networked control systems (NCSs) subject to unknown state and variable disturbance. First, aiming to decrease the unnecessary transmissions of sampled data, an efficient adaptive event‐triggered scheme (AETS) is presented, which can reflect the full real‐time variation of addressed NCSs and help to reduce the conservativeness. Second, based on the triggered output signals and disturbance model, two effective observers are, respectively, exploited to estimate the state and disturbance, which are further utilized to reject the disturbance and design the controller. By using the overall closed‐loop system and selecting an augmented Lyapunov‐Krasovskii functional, two sufficient conditions on jointly designing the adaptive event scheme, observers, and controller are established via linear matrix inequality forms, which can guarantee the global exponential stability and ensure H_∞ performance. Finally, some simulations and comparisons in a numerical example are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the derived results.     

An adaptive critic approach to event‐triggered robust control of nonlinear systems with unmatched uncertainties

In this paper, we develop a novel event‐triggered robust control strategy for continuous‐time nonlinear systems with unmatched uncertainties. First, we build a relationship to show that the event‐triggered robust control can be obtained by solving an event‐triggered nonlinear optimal control problem of the auxiliary system. Then, within the framework of reinforcement learning, we propose an adaptive critic approach to solve the event‐triggered nonlinear optimal control problem. Unlike typical actor‐critic dual approximators used in reinforcement learning, we employ a unique critic approximator to derive the solution of the event‐triggered Hamilton‐Jacobi‐Bellman equation arising in the nonlinear optimal control problem. The critic approximator is updated via the gradient descent method, and the persistence of excitation condition is necessary. Meanwhile, under a newly proposed event‐triggering condition, we prove that the developed critic approximator update rule guarantees all signals in the auxiliary closed‐loop system to be uniformly ultimately bounded. Moreover, we demonstrate that the obtained event‐triggered optimal control can ensure the original system to be stable in the sense of uniform ultimate boundedness. Finally, a F‐16 aircraft plant and a nonlinear system are provided to validate the present event‐triggered robust control scheme.     

Observer‐based leaderless and leader‐following consensus for multiagent systems: A modified integral‐type event‐triggered design

This article aims to solve leaderless and leader‐following consensus problems for general linear systems by integral‐type event‐triggered control method. Different from the existing integral‐type event‐triggered controllers for multiagent systems (MASs), a modified distributed integral‐type event‐triggered scheme is designed via defining a measurement error without continuous communication. Then, distributed event‐triggered protocols are proposed for MASs to achieve the leaderless and leader‐following consensus. Moreover, for the case that all the agents' states are not available, distributed observers are given to estimate the full states. Meanwhile, leaderless and leader‐following consensus problems are investigated based on the observer‐based event‐triggered schemes. In addition, no agent will exhibit Zeno behavior. Finally, simulations are given to verify the effectiveness of our results.     

Event‐triggered PCS Based Trajectory Tracking Control of Systems with Perturbation

This paper is aimed at reducing network load for saving bandwidth by designing appropriate trigger signals that decide when the transmission should be done. An event‐triggered piecewise continuous systems (PCS) based control for time‐varying trajectory tracking is proposed. By designing the sensor system and controller system, the communication between them is reduced while still retaining a satisfactory closed‐loop behavior of the whole system. The major idea behind a designed sensor system is the use of a Luenberger observer and planning of event‐triggered mechanism (ETM). The main principle behind the designed controller system is the proposal of a new event‐triggered PCS based controller. The development is motivated by consideration of variable network induced time delays. Tracking error is proved to be norm‐bounded in both the original and developed case. Finally, to show the proposed method's performance, we present the simulation results for a mobile cart.     

Observer‐based H ∞ control for networked systems with bounded random delays and consecutive packet dropouts

This paper is concerned with the H _∞ control problem for a class of systems with bounded random delays and consecutive packet dropouts that exist in both sensor‐to‐controller channel and controller‐to‐actuator channel during data transmission. A new model is developed to describe possible random delays and packet dropouts by two groups of Bernoulli distributed stochastic variables. To avoid the state augmentation, a full‐order observer‐based feedback controller is designed via LMI approach. Based on the Lyapunov theory, a sufficient condition is provided to guarantee the closed‐loop networked system to be asymptotically mean‐square stable and achieve the prescribed H _∞ disturbance‐rejection‐attenuation level. The simulation examples illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Distributed edge event‐triggered consensus protocol of multi‐agent systems with communication buffer

This paper proposes a distributed edge event‐triggered (DEET) scheme of multi‐agent systems via a communication buffer to reduce unnecessary update of controllers induced by fast information transmission. This edge scheme avoids a synchronous phenomenon in node event‐triggered mechanism, in which the triggering of one agent activates information transmission of all edges linked with this agent. Hence, the node event‐triggered scheme leads to unnecessary update of control protocols while the DEET provides a new approach without constrains on synchronous phenomenon of edge information exchange. That is, the communication on each edge is independent with other edges. In addition, we investigate another case where edge information transmission is subject to quantization and a quantized edge event‐triggered control protocol is proposed. Note that such a quantized protocol guarantees asymptotical consensus instead of bounded consensus in most of the existing literature. Meanwhile, both DEET and quantized edge event‐triggered schemes have nontrivial properties of excluding Zeno behavior. Furthermore, an algorithm is provided to avoid continuous event detection; hence, the communication traffic of the whole network is reduced significantly. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.