2,828 research outputs found
Unified Approach to Convex Robust Distributed Control given Arbitrary Information Structures
We consider the problem of computing optimal linear control policies for
linear systems in finite-horizon. The states and the inputs are required to
remain inside pre-specified safety sets at all times despite unknown
disturbances. In this technical note, we focus on the requirement that the
control policy is distributed, in the sense that it can only be based on
partial information about the history of the outputs. It is well-known that
when a condition denoted as Quadratic Invariance (QI) holds, the optimal
distributed control policy can be computed in a tractable way. Our goal is to
unify and generalize the class of information structures over which quadratic
invariance is equivalent to a test over finitely many binary matrices. The test
we propose certifies convexity of the output-feedback distributed control
problem in finite-horizon given any arbitrarily defined information structure,
including the case of time varying communication networks and forgetting
mechanisms. Furthermore, the framework we consider allows for including
polytopic constraints on the states and the inputs in a natural way, without
affecting convexity
A Fast Algorithm for Sparse Controller Design
We consider the task of designing sparse control laws for large-scale systems
by directly minimizing an infinite horizon quadratic cost with an
penalty on the feedback controller gains. Our focus is on an improved algorithm
that allows us to scale to large systems (i.e. those where sparsity is most
useful) with convergence times that are several orders of magnitude faster than
existing algorithms. In particular, we develop an efficient proximal Newton
method which minimizes per-iteration cost with a coordinate descent active set
approach and fast numerical solutions to the Lyapunov equations. Experimentally
we demonstrate the appeal of this approach on synthetic examples and real power
networks significantly larger than those previously considered in the
literature
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