Disturbance Observer-based Robust Control and Its Applications: 35th Anniversary Overview

Disturbance Observer has been one of the most widely used robust control tools since it was proposed in 1983. This paper introduces the origins of Disturbance Observer and presents a survey of the major results on Disturbance Observer-based robust control in the last thirty-five years. Furthermore, it explains the analysis and synthesis techniques of Disturbance Observer-based robust control for linear and nonlinear systems by using a unified framework. In the last section, this paper presents concluding remarks on Disturbance Observer-based robust control and its engineering applications.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figure

Memory Resilient Gain-scheduled State-Feedback Control of Uncertain LTI/LPV Systems with Time-Varying Delays

The stabilization of uncertain LTI/LPV time delay systems with time varying delays by state-feedback controllers is addressed. At the difference of other works in the literature, the proposed approach allows for the synthesis of resilient controllers with respect to uncertainties on the implemented delay. It is emphasized that such controllers unify memoryless and exact-memory controllers usually considered in the literature. The solutions to the stability and stabilization problems are expressed in terms of LMIs which allow to check the stability of the closed-loop system for a given bound on the knowledge error and even optimize the uncertainty radius under some performance constraints; in this paper, the $\mathcal{H}_\infty$ performance measure is considered. The interest of the approach is finally illustrated through several examples

Average-cost based robust structural control

A method is presented for the synthesis of robust controllers for linear time invariant structural systems with parameterized uncertainty. The method involves minimizing quantities related to the quadratic cost (H2-norm) averaged over a set of systems described by real parameters such as natural frequencies and modal residues. Bounded average cost is shown to imply stability over the set of systems. Approximations for the exact average are derived and proposed as cost functionals. The properties of these approximate average cost functionals are established. The exact average and approximate average cost functionals are used to derive dynamic controllers which can provide stability robustness. The robustness properties of these controllers are demonstrated in illustrative numerical examples and tested in a simple SISO experiment on the MIT multi-point alignment testbed

Discrete-time output feedback sliding-mode control design for uncertain systems using linear matrix inequalities

An output feedback-based sliding-mode control design methodology for discrete-time systems is considered in this article. In previous work, it has been shown that by identifying a minimal set of current and past outputs, an augmented system can be obtained which permits the design of a sliding surface based upon output information only, if the invariant zeros of this augmented system are stable. In this work, a procedure for realising discrete-time controllers via a particular set of extended outputs is presented for non-square systems with uncertainties. This method is applicable when unstable invariant zeros are present in the original system. The conditions for existence of a sliding manifold guaranteeing a stable sliding motion are given. A procedure to obtain a Lyapunov matrix, which simultaneously satisfies both a Riccati inequality and a structural constraint, is used to formulate the corresponding control to solve the reachability problem. A numerical method using linear matrix inequalities is suggested to obtain the Lyapunov matrix. Finally, the design approach given in this article is applied to an aircraft problem and the use of the method as a reconfigurable control strategy in the presence of sensor failure is demonstrated

Robust nonlinear control of vectored thrust aircraft

An interdisciplinary program in robust control for nonlinear systems with applications to a variety of engineering problems is outlined. Major emphasis will be placed on flight control, with both experimental and analytical studies. This program builds on recent new results in control theory for stability, stabilization, robust stability, robust performance, synthesis, and model reduction in a unified framework using Linear Fractional Transformations (LFT's), Linear Matrix Inequalities (LMI's), and the structured singular value micron. Most of these new advances have been accomplished by the Caltech controls group independently or in collaboration with researchers in other institutions. These recent results offer a new and remarkably unified framework for all aspects of robust control, but what is particularly important for this program is that they also have important implications for system identification and control of nonlinear systems. This combines well with Caltech's expertise in nonlinear control theory, both in geometric methods and methods for systems with constraints and saturations