Combined feedforward and model-assisted active disturbance rejection control for non-minimum phase system

Control of the non-minimum phase (NMP) system is challenging, especially in the presence of modelling uncertainties and external disturbances. To this end, this paper presents a combined feedforward and model-assisted Active Disturbance Rejection Control (MADRC) strategy. Based on the nominal model, the feedforward controller is used to produce a tracking performance that has minimum settling time subject to a prescribed undershoot constraint. On the other hand, the unknown disturbances and uncertain dynamics beyond the nominal model are compensated by MADRC. Since the conventional Extended State Observer (ESO) is not suitable for the NMP system, a model-assisted ESO (MESO) is proposed based on the nominal observable canonical form. The convergence of MESO is proved in time domain. The stability, steady-state characteristics and robustness of the closed-loop system are analyzed in frequency domain. The proposed strategy has only one tuning parameter, i.e., the bandwidth of MESO, which can be readily determined with a prescribed robustness level. Some comparative examples are given to show the efficacy of the proposed method. This paper depicts a promising prospect of the model-assisted ADRC in dealing with complex systems.     

Modified reduced order observer based linear active disturbance rejection control for TITO systems

This paper proposes an observer based control approach for two input and two output (TITO) plant affected by the lumped disturbance which includes the undesirable effect of cross couplings, parametric uncertainties, and external disturbances. A modified reduced order extended state observer (ESO) based active disturbance rejection control (ADRC) is designed to estimate the lumped disturbance actively as an extended state and compensate its effect by adding it to the control. The decoupled mechanism has been used to determine the controller parameters, while the proposed control technique is applied to the TITO coupled plant without using decoupler to show its efficacy. Simulation results show that the proposed design is efficiently able to nullify the interactions within the loops in the multivariable process with better transient performance as compared to the existing proportional-integral-derivative (PID) control methods. An experimental application of two tanks multivariable level control system is investigated to present the validity of proposed scheme.     

Performance analysis of active disturbance rejection tracking control for a class of uncertain LTI systems

The paper considers the tracking problem for a class of uncertain linear time invariant (LTI) systems with both uncertain parameters and external disturbances. The active disturbance rejection tracking controller is designed and the resulting closed-loop system׳s characteristics are comprehensively studied. In the time-domain, it is proven that the output of closed-loop system can approach its ideal trajectory in the transient process against different kinds of uncertainties by tuning the bandwidth of extended state observer (ESO). In the frequency-domain, different kinds of parameters׳ influences on the phase margin and the crossover frequency of the resulting control system are illuminated. Finally, the effectiveness and robustness of the controller are verified through the actuator position control system with uncertain parameters and load disturbances in the simulations.     

Direct energy balance based active disturbance rejection control for coal-fired power plant

The conventional direct energy balance (DEB) based PI control can fulfill the fundamental tracking requirements of the coal-fired power plant. However, it is challenging to deal with the cases when the coal quality variation is present. To this end, this paper introduces the active disturbance rejection control (ADRC) to the DEB structure, where the coal quality variation is deemed as a kind of unknown disturbance that can be estimated and mitigated promptly. Firstly, the nonlinearity of a recent power plant model is analyzed based on the gap metric, which provides guidance on how to set the pressure set-point in line with the power demand. Secondly, the approximate decoupling effect of the DEB structure is analyzed based on the relative gain analysis in frequency domain. Finally, the synthesis of the DEB based ADRC control system is carried out based on multi-objective optimization. The optimized ADRC results show that the integrated absolute error (IAE) indices of the tracking performances in both loops can be simultaneously improved, in comparison with the DEB based PI control and H_∞ control system. The regulation performance in the presence of the coal quality variation is significantly improved under the ADRC control scheme. Moreover, the robustness of the proposed strategy is shown comparable with the H_∞ control.     

Modified active disturbance rejection control for time-delay systems

Industrial processes are typically nonlinear, time-varying and uncertain, to which active disturbance rejection control (ADRC) has been shown to be an effective solution. The control design becomes even more challenging in the presence of time delay. In this paper, a novel modification of ADRC is proposed so that good disturbance rejection is achieved while maintaining system stability. The proposed design is shown to be more effective than the standard ADRC design for time-delay systems and is also a unified solution for stable, critical stable and unstable systems with time delay. Simulation and test results show the effectiveness and practicality of the proposed design. Linear matrix inequality (LMI) based stability analysis is provided as well.     

Active disturbance rejection control based human gait tracking for lower extremity rehabilitation exoskeleton

This paper presents an active disturbance rejection control (ADRC) based strategy, which is applied to track the human gait trajectory for a lower limb rehabilitation exoskeleton. The desired human gait trajectory is derived from the Clinical Gait Analysis (CGA). In ADRC, the total external disturbance can be estimated by the extended state observer (ESO) and canceled by the designed control law. The observer bandwidth and the controller bandwidth are determined by the practical principles. We simulated the proposed methodology in MATLAB. The numerical simulation shows the tracking error comparison and the estimated errors of the extended state observer. Two experimental tests were carried out to prove the performance of the algorithm presented in this paper. The experiment results show that the proposed ADRC behaves a better performance than the regular proportional integral derivative (PID) controller. With the proposed ADRC, the rehabilitation system is capable of tracking the target gait more accurately.     

Fractional active disturbance rejection control

A fractional active disturbance rejection control (FADRC) scheme is proposed to improve the performance of commensurate linear fractional order systems (FOS) and the robust analysis shows that the controller is also applicable to incommensurate linear FOS control. In FADRC, the traditional extended states observer (ESO) is generalized to a fractional order extended states observer (FESO) by using the fractional calculus, and the tracking differentiator plus nonlinear state error feedback are replaced by a fractional proportional-derivative controller. To simplify controller tuning, the linear bandwidth-parameterization method has been adopted. The impacts of the observer bandwidth ω_o and controller bandwidth ω_c on system performance are then analyzed. Finally, the FADRC stability and frequency-domain characteristics for linear single-input single-output FOS are analyzed. Simulation results by FADRC and ADRC on typical FOS are compared to demonstrate the superiority and effectiveness of the proposed scheme.     

Active disturbance rejection based trajectory linearization control for hypersonic reentry vehicle with bounded uncertainties

This paper investigates a novel compound control scheme combined with the advantages of trajectory linearization control (TLC) and alternative active disturbance rejection control (ADRC) for hypersonic reentry vehicle (HRV) attitude tracking system with bounded uncertainties. Firstly, in order to overcome actuator saturation problem, nonlinear tracking differentiator (TD) is applied in the attitude loop to achieve fewer control consumption. Then, linear extended state observers (LESO) are constructed to estimate the uncertainties acting on the LTV system in the attitude and angular rate loop. In addition, feedback linearization (FL) based controllers are designed using estimates of uncertainties generated by LESO in each loop, which enable the tracking error for closed-loop system in the presence of large uncertainties to converge to the residual set of the origin asymptotically. Finally, the compound controllers are derived by integrating with the nominal controller for open-loop nonlinear system and FL based controller. Also, comparisons and simulation results are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the control strategy.     

Generalized proportional integral control for periodic signals under active disturbance rejection approach

Conventional repetitive control has proven to be an effective strategy to reject/track periodic signals with constant frequency; however, it shows poor performance in varying frequency applications. This paper proposes an active disturbance rejection methodology applied to a large class of uncertain flat systems for the tracking and rejection of periodic signals, in which the possibilities of the generalized proportional integral (GPI) observer-based control to address repetitive control problems are studied. In the proposed scheme, model uncertainties and external disturbances are lumped together in a general additive disturbance input that is estimated and rejected on-line. An illustrative case study of mechatronic nature is considered. Experimental results show that the proposed GPI observer-based control successfully rejects periodic disturbances even under varying speed conditions.     

Composite disturbance rejection control based on generalized extended state observer

Traditional extended state observer (ESO) design method does not focus on analysis of system reconstruction strategy. The prior information of the controlled system cannot be used for ESO implementation to improve the control accuracy. In this paper, composite disturbance rejection control strategy is proposed based on generalized ESO. First, the disturbance rejection performance of traditional ESO is analyzed to show the essence of the reconstruction strategy. Then, the system is reconstructed based on the equivalent disturbance model. The generalized ESO is proposed based on the reconstructed model, while convergence of the proposed ESO is analyzed along with the outer loop feedback controller. Simulation results on a second order mechanical system show that the proposed generalized ESO can deal with the external disturbance with known model successfully. Experiment of attitude tracking task on an aircraft is also carried out to show the effectiveness of the proposed method.     

RBFNDOB-based neural network inverse control for non-minimum phase MIMO system with disturbances

An adaptive control strategy combining neural network inverse controller (NNIC) with RBFN disturbance observer (RBFNDOB) is developed for a multi-input-multi-output (MIMO) system with non-minimum phase, internal and external disturbances in this paper. Since the inverse model of system is unstable due to the non-minimum phase, a pseudo-plant is constructed, then the RBFN is used to identify the inverse model of pseudo-plant, which can track the parameter variations of system. By copying the structure and parameters of the identifier, the NNIC is obtained. Cascading the NNIC with the original plant, the MIMO system can be decoupled and linearized into independent SISO systems. For the independent decoupled system, the RBFNDOB employs a RBFN to observe the external disturbances and this estimate value is used as a feed-forward compensation term in controller. The case study on ball mill grinding circuit is presented. The effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated by simulation results and comparisons.     

Active disturbance rejection control: Methodology and theoretical analysis

The methodology of ADRC and the progress of its theoretical analysis are reviewed in the paper. Several breakthroughs for control of nonlinear uncertain systems, made possible by ADRC, are discussed. The key in employing ADRC, which is to accurately determine the “total disturbance” that affects the output of the system, is illuminated. The latest results in theoretical analysis of the ADRC-based control systems are introduced.     

Linear active disturbance rejection control of underactuated systems: The case of the Furuta pendulum

An Active Disturbance Rejection Control (ADRC) scheme is proposed for a trajectory tracking problem defined on a nonfeedback linearizable Furuta Pendulum example. A desired rest to rest angular position reference trajectory is to be tracked by the horizontal arm while the unactuated vertical pendulum arm stays around its unstable vertical position without falling down during the entire maneuver and long after it concludes. A linear observer-based linear controller of the ADRC type is designed on the basis of the flat tangent linearization of the system around an arbitrary equilibrium. The advantageous combination of flatness and the ADRC method makes it possible to on-line estimate and cancels the undesirable effects of the higher order nonlinearities disregarded by the linearization. These effects are triggered by fast horizontal arm tracking maneuvers driving the pendulum substantially away from the initial equilibrium point. Convincing experimental results, including a comparative test with a sliding mode controller, are presented.     

Reduced-order model based active disturbance rejection control of hydraulic servo system with singular value perturbation theory

Hydraulic servomechanism is the typical mechanical/hydraulic double-dynamics coupling system with the high stiffness control and mismatched uncertainties input problems, which hinder direct applications of many advanced control approaches in the hydraulic servo fields. In this paper, by introducing the singular value perturbation theory, the original double-dynamics coupling model of the hydraulic servomechanism was reduced to a integral chain system. So that, the popular ADRC (active disturbance rejection control) technology could be directly applied to the reduced system. In addition, the high stiffness control and mismatched uncertainties input problems are avoided. The validity of the simplified model is analyzed and proven theoretically. The standard linear ADRC algorithm is then developed based on the obtained reduced-order model. Extensive comparative co-simulations and experiments are carried out to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.     

Limit cycle analysis of active disturbance rejection control system with two nonlinearities

Introduction of nonlinearities to active disturbance rejection control algorithm might have high control efficiency in some situations, but makes the systems with complex nonlinearity. Limit cycle is a typical phenomenon that can be observed in the nonlinear systems, usually causing failure or danger of the systems. This paper approaches the problem of the existence of limit cycles of a second-order fast tool servo system using active disturbance rejection control algorithm with two fal nonlinearities. A frequency domain approach is presented by using describing function technique and transfer function representation to characterize the nonlinear system. The derivations of the describing functions for fal nonlinearities and treatment of two nonlinearities connected in series are given to facilitate the limit cycles analysis. The effects of the parameters of both the nonlinearity and the controller on the limit cycles are presented, indicating that the limit cycles caused by the nonlinearities can be easily suppressed if the parameters are chosen carefully. Simulations in the time domain are performed to assess the prediction accuracy based on the describing function.     

基于 GA-模糊 RBF 的发电机组滑模自抗扰控制

针对燃煤发电机组风烟系统大惯性、大滞后、参数不稳定等特点,提出一种基于发电机组的滑模自抗扰控制策略。选择模糊径向基函数(RBF)算法辨识模型,以梯度下降法和遗传算法分别对神经网络权值进行粗调和细调,通过扩张状态观测器估计系统内外部扰动,将非线性状态误差反馈控制律与滑模控制策略相结合以克服系统惯性、滞后和扰动的问题,并设计Lyapunov函数验证控制系统稳定性。仿真结果表明,滑模自抗扰控制与串级比例-积分-微分(PID)控制、滑模控制和自抗扰控制相比,在模型适配的情况下,所设计的控制策略在38 s达到设定值,无超调量;当向系统施加20%的反向阶跃干扰时,系统调节时间为39.5 s,超调量为3.4%。在模型失配情况下的调节时间为43.2 s,无超调量;当向系统施加20%的反向阶跃干扰时,系统调节时间为46.4 s,超调量为3.87%。工程应用结果表明,一次风量控制偏差在±10 000 m³/h以内,相比串级PID控制策略波动范围降低21%,系统抗干扰能力和鲁棒性得到有效提升。     

Predictive active disturbance rejection control for processes with time delay

Active disturbance rejection control (ADRC) has been shown to be an effective tool in dealing with real world problems of dynamic uncertainties, disturbances, nonlinearities, etc. This paper addresses its existing limitations with plants that have a large transport delay. In particular, to overcome the delay, the extended state observer (ESO) in ADRC is modified to form a predictive ADRC, leading to significant improvements in the transient response and stability characteristics, as shown in extensive simulation studies and hardware-in-the-loop tests, as well as in the frequency response analysis. In this research, it is assumed that the amount of delay is approximately known, as is the approximated model of the plant. Even with such uncharacteristic assumptions for ADRC, the proposed method still exhibits significant improvements in both performance and robustness over the existing methods such as the dead-time compensator based on disturbance observer and the Filtered Smith Predictor, in the context of some well-known problems of chemical reactor and boiler control problems.     

On performance analysis of ADRC for a class of MIMO lower-triangular nonlinear uncertain systems

This paper designs the active disturbance rejection control (ADRC) to achieve desired performance for a class of MIMO lower-triangular nonlinear systems with large uncertainties under un-matched condition. We develop the ADRC with a set of extended state observers, and prove that the closed-loop system can achieve satisfied dynamic performance. The theoretical results illustrate the relationship between the bound of the concerned error and the bandwidth of extend state observers.     

Modified Smith predictor design for periodic disturbance rejection

In this paper, a modified Smith predictor control scheme is proposed for periodic disturbance rejection in both stable and unstable processes with time delay. Without affecting the superior setpoint response of Smith predictor control, the regulation performance under periodic disturbance can be enhanced significantly by the proposed design. Meanwhile, the asymptotical rejection for non-periodic disturbance will also be improved. Internal stability is investigated for a closed-loop control system. The effectiveness of the proposed scheme will be demonstrated by simulations as well as a test on an experimental thermal system.