Output feedback optimal guaranteed cost control of uncertain piecewise linear systems

This paper proposes the output feedback optimal guaranteed cost controller design method for uncertain piecewise linear systems based on the piecewise quadratic Lyapunov functions technique. By constructing piecewise quadratic Lyapunov functions for the closed‐loop augmented systems, the existence of the guaranteed cost controller for closed‐loop uncertain piecewise linear systems is cast as the feasibility of a set of bilinear matrix inequalities (BMIs). Some of the variables in BMIs are set to be searched by genetic algorithm (GA), then for a given chromosome corresponding to the variables in BMIs, the BMIs turn to be linear matrix inequalities (LMIs), and the corresponding non‐convex optimization problem, which minimizes the upper bound on cost function, reduces to a semidefinite programming (SDP) which is convex and can be solved numerically efficiently with the available software. Thus, the output feedback optimal guaranteed cost controller can be obtained by solving the non‐convex optimization problem using the mixed algorithm that combines GA and SDP. Numerical examples show the effectiveness of the proposed method. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.