A Control-Oriented Notion of Finite State Approximation

We consider the problem of approximating discrete-time plants with finite-valued sensors and actu- ators by deterministic finite memory systems for the purpose of certified-by-design controller synthesis. Building on ideas from robust control, we propose a control-oriented notion of finite state approximation for these systems, demonstrate its relevance to the control synthesis problem, and discuss its key features.Comment: IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, to appea

Finite Alphabet Control of Logistic Networks with Discrete Uncertainty

We consider logistic networks in which the control and disturbance inputs take values in finite sets. We derive a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of robustly control invariant (hyperbox) sets. We show that a stronger version of this condition is sufficient to guarantee robust global attractivity, and we construct a counterexample demonstrating that it is not necessary. Being constructive, our proofs of sufficiency allow us to extract the corresponding robust control laws and to establish the invariance of certain sets. Finally, we highlight parallels between our results and existing results in the literature, and we conclude our study with two simple illustrative examples