Modified bang‐bang controller for maximal and minimal time optimal control problems

Recently, there have been a series of results regarding two time optimal control problems for a class of linear and nonlinear systems ‐ one is to keep the system states within certain bound for the longest time during feedback disruption and the other is to derive the system states to near the origin as fast as possible after feedback recovery, both under bounded control inputs. These are called maximal and minimal time optimal control problems, respectively. In the existing results, a bang‐bang controller has been commonly suggested as the actual implementation of the optimal controller. In this paper, we suggest a modified version of the bang‐bang controller which can also serve as an approximate optimal controller. Our proposed controller provides the (near) optimal performance with (i) possible reduction of a number of switchings; (ii) possible reduction of control input magnitude.     

Robust Optimal Control of Nonlinear Systems With System Disturbance During Feedback Disruption

In this paper, a robust optimal control problem of nonlinear systems with system disturbance during feedback disruption is considered. This is an extended work of previous time‐delay optimal control results, by adding external disturbance in the considered system. It is shown that there exists an optimal input signal which keeps the performance error within the specified bound for the longest time. Then, it is shown that such an optimal input signal can be approximated by an implementable bang‐bang input signal in terms of control performance. Two examples are given for illustration.     

Control of a 2 × 2 coupled linear hyperbolic system sandwiched between 2 ODEs

Motivated by an engineering application in cable mining elevators, we address a new problem on stabilization of 2×2 coupled linear first‐order hyperbolic PDEs sandwiched between 2 ODEs. A novel methology combining PDE backstepping and ODE backstepping is proposed to derive a state‐feedback controller without high differential terms. The well‐posedness and invertibility properties of the PDE backstepping transformation are proved. All states, including coupled linear hyperbolic PDEs and 2 ODEs, are included in the closed‐loop exponential stability analysis. Moreover, boundedness and exponential convergence of the designed controller are proved. The performance is investigated via numerical simulation.     

Delay‐range‐dependent control of nonlinear time‐delay systems under input saturation

This paper describes a delay‐range‐dependent local state feedback controller synthesis approach providing estimation of the region of stability for nonlinear time‐delay systems under input saturation. By employing a Lyapunov–Krasovskii functional, properties of nonlinear functions, local sector condition and Jensen's inequality, a sufficient condition is derived for stabilization of nonlinear systems with interval delays varying within a range. Novel solutions to the delay‐range‐dependent and delay‐dependent stabilization problems for linear and nonlinear time‐delay systems, respectively, subject to input saturation are derived as specific scenarios of the proposed control strategy. Also, a delay‐rate‐independent condition for control of nonlinear systems in the presence of input saturation with unknown delay‐derivative bound information is established. And further, a robust state feedback controller synthesis scheme ensuring L₂ gain reduction from disturbance to output is devised to address the problem of the stabilization of input‐constrained nonlinear time‐delay systems with varying interval lags. The proposed design conditions can be solved using linear matrix inequality tools in connection with conventional cone complementary linearization algorithms. Simulation results for an unstable nonlinear time‐delay network and a large‐scale chemical reactor under input saturation and varying interval time‐delays are analyzed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methodology. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Robust Exponential Stability and Stabilization of a Class of Nonlinear Stochastic Time‐Delay Systems

This paper presents new exponential stability and delayed‐state‐feedback stabilization criteria for a class of nonlinear uncertain stochastic time‐delay systems. By choosing the delay fraction number as two, applying the Jensen inequality to every sub‐interval of the time delay interval and avoiding using any free weighting matrix, the method proposed can reduce the computational complexity and conservativeness of results. Based on Lyapunov stability theory, exponential stability and delayed‐state‐feedback stabilization conditions of nonlinear uncertain stochastic systems with the state delay are obtained. In the sequence, the delayed‐state‐feedback stabilization problem for a nonlinear uncertain stochastic time‐delay system is investigated and some sufficient conditions are given in the form of nonlinear inequalities. In order to solve the nonlinear problem, a cone complementarity linearization algorithm is offered. Mathematical and/or numerical comparisons between the proposed method and existing ones are demonstrated, which show the effectiveness and less conservativeness of the proposed method.     

Low dimensional disturbance observer‐based control for nonlinear parabolic PDE systems with spatio‐temporal disturbances

In this paper, a design problem of low dimensional disturbance observer‐based control (DOBC) is considered for a class of nonlinear parabolic partial differential equation (PDE) systems with the spatio‐temporal disturbance modeled by an infinite dimensional exosystem of parabolic PDE. Motivated by the fact that the dominant structure of the parabolic PDE is usually characterized by a finite number of degrees of freedom, the modal decomposition method is initially applied to both the PDE system and the PDE exosystem to derive a low dimensional slow system and a low dimensional slow exosystem, which accurately capture the dominant dynamics of the PDE system and the PDE exosystem, respectively. Then, the definition of input‐to‐state stability for the PDE system with the spatio‐temporal disturbance is given to formulate the design objective. Subsequently, based on the derived slow system and slow exosystem, a low dimensional disturbance observer (DO) is constructed to estimate the state of the slow exosystem, and then a low dimensional DOBC is given to compensate the effect of the slow exosystem in order to reject approximately the spatio‐temporal disturbance. Then, a design method of low dimensional DOBC is developed in terms of linear matrix inequality to guarantee that not only the closed‐loop slow system is exponentially stable in the presence of the slow exosystem but also the closed‐loop PDE system is input‐to‐state stable in the presence of the spatio‐temporal disturbance. Finally, simulation results on the control of temperature profile for catalytic rod demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

State‐Feedback Stabilization of Stochastic Nonlinear Systems with Time‐Varying Delay and Different Orders

This paper studies the problem of state feedback stabilization for a class of stochastic time‐varying delay nonlinear systems which are neither necessarily feedback linearizable nor affine in the control input. Based on the backstepping design method and the adding of a power integrator technique, a state feedback controller is constructed to ensure the origin of closed‐loop system is globally asymptotically stable in probability. The main design difficulty is how to deal with the different power orders, time‐varying delay and the nonsmooth system perturbations. The efficiency of the state feedback controller is demonstrated by a simulation example.     

Compensation of time‐varying input delay for discrete‐time nonlinear systems

We consider general discrete‐time nonlinear systems (of arbitrary nonlinear growth) with time‐varying input delays and design an explicit predictor feedback controller to compensate the input delay. Such results have been achieved in continuous time, but only under the restriction that the delay rate is bounded by unity, which ensures that the input signal flow does not get reversed, namely, that old inputs are not felt multiple times by the plant (because on such subsequent occasions, the control input acts as a disturbance). For discrete‐time systems, an analogous restriction would be that the input delay is non‐increasing. In this work, we do not impose such a restriction. We provide a design and a global stability analysis that allow the input delay to be arbitrary (containing intervals of increase, decrease, or stagnation) over an arbitrarily long finite period of time. Unlike in the continuous‐time case, the predictor feedback law in the discrete‐time case is explicit. We specialize the result to linear time‐invariant systems and provide an explicit estimate of the exponential decay rate. Carefully constructed examples are provided to illustrate the design and analytical challenges. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Time‐varying input delay compensation for nonlinear systems with additive disturbance: An output feedback approach

This paper addresses the output feedback tracking control of a class of multiple‐input and multiple‐output nonlinear systems subject to time‐varying input delay and additive bounded disturbances. Based on the backstepping design approach, an output feedback robust controller is proposed by integrating an extended state observer and a novel robust controller, which uses a desired trajectory‐based feedforward term to achieve an improved model compensation and a robust delay compensation feedback term based on the finite integral of the past control values to compensate for the time‐varying input delay. The extended state observer can simultaneously estimate the unmeasurable system states and the additive disturbances only with the output measurement and delayed control input. The proposed controller theoretically guarantees prescribed transient performance and steady‐state tracking accuracy in spite of the presence of time‐varying input delay and additive bounded disturbances based on Lyapunov stability analysis by using a Lyapunov‐Krasovskii functional. A specific study on a 2‐link robot manipulator is performed; based on the system model and the proposed design procedure, a suitable controller is developed, and comparative simulation results are obtained to demonstrate the effectiveness of the developed control scheme.     

The Bang‐bang principle of time optimal controls for the Kuramoto–Sivashinsky–KdV equation with internal control

This paper is concerned with the time optimal control problem governed by the internal controlled Kuramoto–Sivashinsky–Korteweg‐de Vries equation, which describes many physical processes in motion of turbulence and other unstable process systems. We prove the existence of optimal controls with the help of the Carleman inequality, which has been widely used to obtain the local controllability or null controllability of parabolic differential systems. More precisely, with the help of the Carleman inequality, we obtain a relationship between the null controllability and time optimal control problem. Moreover, we give the bang‐bang principle for an optimal control of our original problem by using the one of approximate problems. This method is new for time optimal control problems. The bang‐bang principle established here seems also to be new for fourth‐order parabolic differential equations. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Two‐stage stability control for strict‐feedback systems with input delays and input nonlinear uncertainties

In this paper, a two‐stage control procedure is proposed for stabilization of a class of strict‐feedback systems with unknown constant time delays and nonlinear uncertainties in the input. A nominal controller is first designed to compensate input time delays without considering input nonlinear uncertainties. Extended from backstepping algorithm, input delay compensation is realized by means of predicted states that are computed through integration of cascaded system dynamics, making the nominal closed‐loop system asymptotically stable. Based on the nominal controller presented for the input delay system, a multi‐timescale system is subsequently developed to estimate the unknown input nonlinearity and make the estimate approach the nominal control input as fast as possible. It is proved that the proposed control scheme can make states of the strict‐feedback systems converge to zero and all the signals of the closed‐loop systems are guaranteed to be bounded in the presence of input time delays and nonlinear uncertainties. Simulation verification is carried out to illuminate the effectiveness of the proposed control approach.     

Delay compensated control of the Stefan problem and robustness to delay mismatch

This paper presents a control design for the one‐phase Stefan problem under actuator delay via a backstepping method. The Stefan problem represents a liquid‐solid phase change phenomenon which describes the time evolution of a material's temperature profile and the interface position. The actuator delay is modeled by a first‐order hyperbolic partial differential equation (PDE), resulting in a cascaded transport‐diffusion PDE system defined on a time‐varying spatial domain described by an ordinary differential equation (ODE). Two nonlinear backstepping transformations are utilized for the control design. The setpoint restriction is given to guarantee a physical constraint on the proposed controller for the melting process. This constraint ensures the exponential convergence of the moving interface to a setpoint and the exponential stability of the temperature equilibrium profile and the delayed controller in the norm. Furthermore, robustness analysis with respect to the delay mismatch between the plant and the controller is studied, which provides analogous results to the exact compensation by restricting the control gain.     

Stabilization of strict‐feedback nonlinear systems with input delay using closed‐loop predictors

In this paper, we consider the control problem of strict‐feedback nonlinear systems with time‐varying input and output delays. The approach is based on the usual observer/predictor/feedback approach, but the novelty is the use of the closed‐loop dynamics in the predictor. This approach allows to develop two designs, an instantaneous predictor and a delay differential equation‐based predictor, that both attain the same performance in terms of system trajectories and input signal as in the case with no delays. The design based on delay differential equations allows to build a cascade of predictors to deal with arbitrarily large delay bounds. The resulting controller is much simpler to implement than classical infinite‐dimensional predictors, and it is robust with respect to actuation and measurement disturbances. We illustrate the approach with an application to the control of a chaotic system with input delay. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Global output feedback sampled‐data stabilization for upper‐triangular nonlinear systems with improved maximum allowable transmission delay

This paper addresses the problem of output feedback sampled‐data stabilization for upper‐triangular nonlinear systems with improved maximum allowable transmission delay. A class of hybrid systems are firstly introduced. The transmission delay may be larger than the sampling period. Then, sufficient conditions are proposed to guarantee global exponential stability of the hybrid systems. Based on these sufficient conditions and a linear continuous‐discrete observer, an output feedback control law is presented to globally exponentially stabilize the feedforward nonlinear system. The improved maximum allowable transmission delay is also given. The results are also extended to output feedback sampled‐data stabilization for lower‐triangular nonlinear systems. Finally, illustrative examples are used to verify the effectiveness of the proposed design methods. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Dynamic self‐triggered output‐feedback control for nonlinear stochastic systems with time delays

In this paper, the dynamic self‐triggered output‐feedback control problem is investigated for a class of nonlinear stochastic systems with time delays. To reduce the network resource consumption, the dynamic event‐triggered mechanism is implemented in the sensor‐to‐controller channel. Criteria are first established for the closed‐loop system to be stochastically input‐to‐state stable under the event‐triggered mechanism. Furthermore, sufficient conditions are given under which the closed‐loop system with dynamic event‐triggered mechanism is almost surely stable, and the output‐feedback controller as well as the dynamic event‐triggered mechanism are co‐designed. Moreover, a dynamic self‐triggered mechanism is proposed such that the nonlinear stochastic system with the designed output‐feedback controller is stochastically input‐to‐state stable and the Zeno phenomenon is excluded. Finally, a numerical example is provided to illustrate the effectiveness of proposed dynamic self‐triggered output‐feedback control scheme.     

Input‐to‐state stability of min‐max MPC scheme for nonlinear time‐varying delay systems

This paper studies the robustness problem of the min–max model predictive control (MPC) scheme for constrained nonlinear time‐varying delay systems subject to bounded disturbances. The notion of the input‐to‐state stability (ISS) of nonlinear time‐delay systems is introduced. Then by using the Lyapunov–Krasovskii method, a delay‐dependent sufficient condition is derived to guarantee input‐to‐state practical stability (ISpS) of the closed‐loop system by way of nonlinear matrix inequalities (NLMI). In order to lessen the online computational demand, the non‐convex min‐max optimization problem is then converted to a minimization problem with linear matrix inequality (LMI) constraints and a suboptimal MPC algorithm is provided. Finally, an example of a truck‐trailer is used to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed results. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley and Sons Asia Pte Ltd and Chinese Automatic Control Society     

Performance‐based near‐optimal vibration control for nonlinear offshore platforms with delayed input

This paper investigates the vibration control problem for offshore platform, where the nonlinear characteristics, delayed input and external wave force are considered in time domain. By introducing a delay‐free reconstructional vector and applying the maximum principle, the original vibration problem for offshore platform is formulated as a nonlinear two‐point‐boundary‐value (TPBV) problem with delayed items. The major contribution of this paper is that a performance‐based near‐optimal vibration control strategy is proposed by solving this nonlinear TPBV problem, which includes a feedback item with offshore platform system state, a feedforward item with wave force state, and a compensator for nonlinear and delayed items with infinite supersensitive component. In particular, the designed compensator is calculated from two group series of linear differential equations by introducing a parameter for expending the Maclaurin series of nonlinear and delay items. Meanwhile, an iterative algorithm is designed to make the proposed vibration control scheme computable based on the control performance in each iterative procedure. Finally, experimental results show that the displacement, velocity and performance index of an employed offshore platform achieved small values under the proposed control strategy and designed algorithm.     

Single-step full-state feedback control design for nonlinear hyperbolic PDEs

The present work proposes an extension of single-step formulation of full-state feedback control design to the class of distributed parameter system described by nonlinear hyperbolic partial differential equations (PDEs). Under a simultaneous implementation of a nonlinear coordinate transformation and a nonlinear state feedback law, both feedback control and stabilisation design objectives given as target stable dynamics are accomplished in one step. In particular, the mathematical formulation of the problem is realised via a system of first-order quasi-linear singular PDEs. By using Lyapunov's auxiliary theorem for singular PDEs, the necessary and sufficient conditions for solvability are utilised. The solution to the singular PDEs is locally analytic, which enables development of a PDE series solution. Finally, the theory is successfully applied to an exothermic plug-flow reactor system and a damped second-order hyperbolic PDE system demonstrating ability of in-domain nonlinear control law to achieve stabilisation.     

Stabilization of a class of nonlinear uncertain ordinary differential equation by parabolic partial differential equation controller

This article is concerned with stabilization for a class of uncertain nonlinear ordinary differential equation (ODE) with dynamic controller governed by linear 1?d heat partial differential equation (PDE). The control input acts at the one boundary of the heat's controller domain and the second boundary injects a Dirichlet term in ODE plant. The main contribution of this article is the use of the recent infinite‐dimensional backstepping design for state feedback stabilization design of coupled PDE‐ODE systems, to stabilize exponentially the nonlinear uncertain systems, under the restrictions that (a) the right‐hand side of the ODE equation has the classical particular form: linear controllable part with an additive nonlinear uncertain function satisfying lower triangular linear growth condition, and (b) the length of the PDE domain has to be restricted. We solve the stabilization problem despite the fact that all known backstepping transformation in the literature cannot decouple the PDE and the ODE subsystems. Such difficulty is due to the presence of a nonlinear uncertain term in the ODE system. This is done by introducing a new globally exponentially stable target system for which the PDE and ODE subsystems are strongly coupled. Finally, an example is given to illustrate the design procedure of the proposed method.     

Output‐feedback control strategies of lower‐triangular nonlinear nonholonomic systems in any prescribed finite time

In this paper, output‐feedback control strategies are proposed for lower‐triangular nonlinear nonholonomic systems in any prescribed finite time. Specifically, by employing the input‐state–scaling technique, the controlled systems are firstly converted into lower‐triangular nonlinear systems, which makes it possible to study such systems using the high‐gain technique. Then, by introducing a scaling of the state by a function that grows unbounded toward the terminal time and proposing a high‐gain observer–prescribed finite time recovering the system states, the output‐feedback regulation control problem in any prescribed finite time is firstly achieved for nonlinear nonholonomic systems with unknown constant incremental rate. Moreover, by designing another time‐varying high gain, the output‐feedback stabilization control problem in any prescribed finite time is then achieved for nonlinear nonholonomic systems with a time‐varying incremental rate. Finally, a numerical example is introduced to show the effectiveness of proposed control strategies.