An event-triggered control approach for the leader-tracking problem with heterogeneous agents

This paper presents an event-triggered control and communication framework for the cooperative leader-tracking problem with communication constraints. Continuous communication among agents is not assumed in this work and decentralised event-based strategies are proposed for agents with heterogeneous linear dynamics. Also, the leader dynamics are unknown and only intermittent measurements of its states are obtained by a subset of the followers. The event-based method not only represents a way to restrict communication among agents, but it also provides a decentralised scheme for scheduling information broadcasts. Notably, each agent is able to determine its own broadcasting instants independently of any other agent in the network. In an extension, the case where transmission of information is affected by time-varying communication delays is addressed. Finally, positive lower-bounds on the inter-event time intervals are obtained in order to show that Zeno behaviour does not exist and, therefore, continuous exchange of information is never needed in this framework.     

Asynchronous decentralised event-triggered control of multi-agent systems

In this paper, the consensus problem of first-order multi-agent systems under linear asynchronous decentralised event-triggered control is investigated. Both undirected and directed topologies are considered. In the analysis, the closed-loop multi-agent systems with the event-triggered control are modelled as switched systems. After proposing the decentralised event-triggered consensus protocols, decentralised state-dependent event conditions are derived, which act as switching signals. The consensus analyses are performed based on graph theory and stability results of switched systems. Under the event-triggered control schemes presented, consensus is reached with enlarged sampling periods and no Zeno behaviour. Simulation examples are given to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed theoretical results.     

Multiple model-based event-triggered adaptive control of a class of discrete-time nonlinear systems

In this study, the problem of event-triggered-based adaptive control (ETAC) for a class of discrete-time nonlinear systems with unknown parameters and nonlinear uncertainties is considered. Both neural network (NN) based and linear identifiers are used to approximate the unknown system dynamics. The feedback output signals are transmitted, and the parameters and the NN weights of the identifiers are tuned in an aperiodic manner at the event sample instants. A switching mechanism is provided to evaluate the approximate performance of each identifier and decide which estimated output is utilised for the event-triggered controller design, during any two events. The linear identifier with an auxiliary output and an improved adaptive law is introduced so that the nonlinear uncertainties are no longer assumed to be Lipschitz. The number of transmission times are significantly reduced by incorporating multiple model schemes into ETAC. The boundedness of both the parameters of identifiers and the system outputs is demonstrated though the Lyapunov approach. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.     

Markov跳变系统的非同步事件触发耗散容错控制

本文主要研究一类具有执行器故障的Markov跳变系统的非同步事件触发耗散容错控制问题.通过引入非同步事件触发器来降低传感器的采样数据传输频率,从而降低通信消耗.采用两个独立的隐Markov模型分别描述触发器、控制器与原系统之间的非同步现象.在此框架下,基于Lyapunov稳定性和耗散理论,得到了闭环控制系统在执行器存在故障的情况下随机稳定并严格耗散的充分条件.并借助矩阵不等式变换技术给出了触发器和控制器矩阵参数的求解方法,实现了触发器和控制器的协同设计.最后,通过仿真研究验证了所提出的设计方法的有效性.     

PI event-triggered control under saturating actuators

This paper proposes a methodology to design stabilising event-trigger strategies for PI-controlled linear continuous-time plants subject to input saturation. Using Lyapunov theory techniques, conditions based on linear matrix inequalities (LMI) are derived to guarantee regional (or global, when possible) asymptotic stability of the equilibrium. These conditions can be incorporated in optimisation problems to choose the parameters of the trigger function aiming at reducing the sampling activity, while ensuring the regional stability of the equilibrium with respect to a given set of admissible initial states. Simulation results illustrate the application and potentialities of the method.     

Experimental evaluation of two complementary decentralized event-based control methods

Event-based control aims at reducing the feedback communication effort among the sensors, controllers and actuators in control loops to time instants at which the feedback of information is necessary to meet a desired control performance. This paper presents a new method for the decentralized event-based control of physically interconnected systems and shows its experimental evaluation. The novel method is based on two complementary approaches, called the global and the local approach, which jointly ensure the ultimate boundedness of the closed-loop system. The global approach steers the state of each subsystem into a target region, whereas the local approach keeps the state in this set in spite of exogenous disturbances and the effect of the interconnections to other subsystems. This event-based control method is applied to a continuous flow process to show its practical implementation and to evaluate the analytical results on the basis of experiments.     

On event design in event-triggered feedback systems

This paper studies event design in event-triggered feedback systems. A novel event-triggering scheme is presented to ensure exponential stability of the resulting sampled-data system. The scheme postpones the triggering of events over previously proposed methods and therefore enlarges the intersampling period. The resulting intersampling periods and deadlines are bounded strictly away from zero when the continuous time system is input-to-state stable with respect to measurement errors.     

Network-based event-triggered filtering for Markovian jump systems

The problem of event-triggered H_∞ filtering for networked Markovian jump system is studied in this paper. A dynamic discrete event-triggered scheme is designed to choose the transmitted data for different Markovian jumping modes. The time-delay modelling method is employed to describe the event-triggered scheme and the network-related behaviour, such as transmission delay, data package dropout and disorder, into a networked Markovian time-delay jump system. Furthermore, a sufficient condition is derived to guarantee that the resulting filtering error system is stochastically stable with a prescribed performance index. A co-design method for the H_∞ filter and the event-triggered scheme is then proposed. The effectiveness and potential of the theoretic results obtained are illustrated by a simulation example.     

一类航天器控制系统反馈调度方法研究

针对目前航天器控制系统普遍采用静态调度方式,不能够及时调整计算资源分配的问题,提出了一种基于执行时间测量的计算资源反馈调度算法。该方法一方面保证航天器在工作时间段控制精度达到指标要求,另一方面能够动态调整计算资源与控制增益,降低系统功耗。同时在计算机发生故障时保证航天器控制系统稳定运行。最后通过仿真分析验证了方法有效性。     

Stability of model-based event-triggered control systems: a separation property

To save resource of communication, this paper investigates the model-based event-triggered control systems. Two main problems are considered in this paper. One is, for given plant and model, to design event conditions to guarantee the stability of the systems. The other is to consider the effect of the model matrices on the stability. The results show that the closed-loop systems can be asymptotically stabilised with any model matrices in compact sets if the parameters in the event conditions are within the designed ranges. Then, a separation property of model-based event-triggered control is proposed. Namely, the design of the controller gain and the event condition can be separated from the selection of the model matrices. Based on this property, an adaption mechanism is introduced to the model-based event-triggered control systems, which can further improve the sampling performance. Finally, a numerical example is given to show the efficiency and feasibility of the developed results.     

基于无线传感器网络的控制系统采样频率优化算法

针对基于无线传感网的网络化控制系统,讨论了采样频率的优化问题．建立了以数字和模拟控制系统性能差距指数最低为目标,以无线节点的通信容量为约束条件的非线性优化模型,并以障碍函数法进行求解,提出了基于节点缓冲区信息的分布武迭代算法．该算法在传感节点的计算量小,易于实现．仿真表明该算法能有效收敛到系统的最优目标点,并能适应于系统的负载变化．     

Networked event-triggered control: an introduction and research trends

A physical system can be studied as either continuous time or discrete-time system depending upon the control objectives. Discrete-time control systems can be further classified into two categories based on the sampling: (1) time-triggered control systems and (2) event-triggered control systems. Time-triggered systems sample states and calculate controls at every sampling instant in a periodic fashion, even in cases when states and calculated control do not change much. This indicates unnecessary and useless data transmission and computation efforts of a time-triggered system, thus inefficiency. For networked systems, the transmission of measurement and control signals, thus, cause unnecessary network traffic. Event-triggered systems, on the other hand, have potential to reduce the communication burden in addition to reducing the computation of control signals. This paper provides an up-to-date survey on the event-triggered methods for control systems and highlights the potential research directions.     

Remote human–robot collaboration: A cyber–physical system application for hazard manufacturing environment

Collaborative robot's lead-through is a key feature towards human–robot collaborative manufacturing. The lead-through feature can release human operators from debugging complex robot control codes. In a hazard manufacturing environment, human operators are not allowed to enter, but the lead-through feature is still desired in many circumstances. To target the problem, the authors introduce a remote human–robot collaboration system that follows the concept of cyber–physical systems. The introduced system can flexibly work in four different modes according to different scenarios. With the utilisation of a collaborative robot and an industrial robot, a remote robot control system and a model-driven display system is designed. The designed system is also implemented and tested in different scenarios. The final analysis indicates a great potential to adopt the developed system in hazard manufacturing environment.     

四旋翼无人飞行器的轨迹跟踪与滑模事件驱动控制

四旋翼飞行器作为一个典型的欠驱动的系统,具有强耦合、非线性等特性.针对飞行器外部干扰、和通信资源受限条件下的轨迹跟踪控制问题,进行滑模事件驱动控制方法的研究.首先,分析动力学特性,通过时间尺度分解方法将系统解耦成位置子系统和姿态子系统.其次,将位置子系统转化为严格反馈形式,设计反步滑模控制器,实现位置轨迹稳定跟踪;针对姿态子系统存在时变有界扰动及通信受限,设计滑模事件驱动控制律,在抑制干扰的同时实现对虚拟姿态跟踪指令的跟踪.根据Lyapunov分析方法证明了所设计控制器的稳定性,并通过理论分析证明闭环控制系统不会出现Zeno现象.最后,仿真结果验证了滑模事件驱动控制律在存在外部扰动和通信受限时四旋翼无人飞行器轨迹跟踪的鲁棒性.     

Observer-based feedback stabilization of linear systems with event-triggered sampling and dynamic quantization

We consider the problem of output feedback stabilization in linear systems when the measured outputs and control inputs are subject to event-triggered sampling and dynamic quantization. A new sampling algorithm is proposed for outputs which does not lead to accumulation of sampling times and results in asymptotic stabilization of the system. The approach for output sampling is based on defining an event function that compares the difference between the current output and the most recently transmitted output sample not only with the current value of the output, but also takes into account a certain number of previously transmitted output samples. This allows us to reconstruct the state using an observer with sample-and-hold measurements. The estimated states are used to generate a control input, which is subjected to a different event-triggered sampling routine; hence the sampling times of inputs and outputs are asynchronous. Using Lyapunov-based approach, we prove the asymptotic stabilization of the closed-loop system and show that there exists a minimum inter-sampling time for control inputs and for outputs. To show that these sampling routines are robust with respect to transmission errors, only the quantized (in space) values of outputs and inputs are transmitted to the controller and the plant, respectively. A dynamic quantizer is adopted for this purpose, and an algorithm is proposed to update the range and the centre of the quantizer that results in an asymptotically stable closed-loop system.     

Stochastic optimal control of networked control systems with control packet dropouts

This paper considers the stochastic optimal control problem for networked control systems(NCSs)with control packet dropouts.The proportional plus up to the third-order derivative(PD3)compensation strategy is adopted to compensate for control packet dropouts at the actuator by using the past control packets stored in the buffer.Based on the strategy,a new NCS structure model with packet dropouts is provided,where the packet dropout is assumed to obey the Bernoulli random binary distribution.In terms of the given model,the stochastic optimal control law is proposed. Numerical examples illustrate the effectiveness of the results.     

Optimality of decentralized control for large-scale systems

A decentralized control scheme is given for the stabilization of large-scale linear systems composed of a number of controllable subsystems. A class of interconnection structures among subsystems is defined for which the overall system can always be stabilized by local state feedback which is optimal for a quadratic performance index. The resulting closed-loop system has robust stability properties against a wide range of variations in open-loop dynamics. Optimality of the decentralized control law is preserved for a modified performance index under perturbations in interconnections such that the strength of coupling does not increase. The class of decentrally stabilizable large-scale systems presented in this paper is the largest such class hitherto described by the structure of interconnections.     

Event-triggered controller design of nonlinear discrete-time networked control systems in T-S fuzzy model

This article is concerned with event-triggered fuzzy control design for a class of discrete-time nonlinear networked control systems (NCSs) with time-varying communication delays. Firstly, a more general mixed event-triggering scheme (ETS) is proposed. Secondly, considering the effects of the ETS and communication delays, based on the T-S fuzzy model scheme and time delay system approach, the original nonlinear NCSs is reformulated as a new event-triggered networked T-S fuzzy systems with interval time-varying delays. Sufficient conditions for uniform ultimately bound (UUB) stability are established in terms of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs). In particular, the quantitative relation between the boundness of the stability region and the triggering parameters are studied in detail. Thirdly, a relative ETS is also provided, which can be seen as a special case of the above proposed mixed ETS. As a difference from the preceding results, sufficient conditions on the existence of desired fuzzy controller are derived to ensure the asymptotic stability of the closed-loop system with reduced communication frequency between sensors and controllers. Moreover, a co-design algorithm for simultaneously determining the gain matrices of the fuzzy controller and the triggering parameters is developed. Finally, two illustrative examples are presented to demonstrate the advantage of the proposed ETS and the effectiveness of the controller design method.     

Decentralised event-triggered cooperative control with limited communication

This note studies event-triggered control of Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) with first-order integrator dynamics. It extends previous work on event-triggered consensus by considering limited communication capabilities through strict peer-to-peer non-continuous information exchange. The approach provides both a decentralised control law and a decentralised communication policy. Communication events require no global information and are based only on local state errors; agents do not require a global sampling period or synchronous broadcasting as in sampled-data approaches. The proposed decentralised event-triggered control technique guarantees that the inter-event times for each agent are strictly positive. Finally, the ideas in this note are used to consider the practical scenario where agents are able to exchange only quantised measurements of their states.     

Error encoding algorithms for networked control systems

A networked control system is characterized by having a feedback loop closed through a local area network. This paper considers methods for scheduling the use of the network to guarantee both stability and controller performance. We propose and validate algorithms for choosing message identifiers for dynamically scheduled networked control systems. Two schemes for selecting priority levels are proposed: a fixed arbitrary grid and an auto-scaling grid. We prove that the system is uniformly ultimately bounded in the case of the fixed encoding scheme, and asymptotically stable with auto-scaling. An inverted pendulum is used to illustrate the encoding methods.