Nonlinear Sliding Mode Control for Interconnected Systems with Application to Automated Highway Systems

In this paper, a decentralised control strategy based on sliding mode techniques is proposed for a class of nonlinear interconnected systems. Both matched uncertainties in the isolated subsystems and mismatched uncertainties associated with the interconnections are considered. Under mild conditions, sliding mode controllers for each subsystem are designed in a decentralised manner by only employing local information. Conditions are determined which enable information on the interconnections to be employed within the decentralised controller design to reduce conservatism. The developed results are applied to an automated highway system. Simulation results pertaining to a high-speed following system are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach

Decentralised sliding mode control for nonlinear interconnected systems in the regular form

In this paper, a decentralised control strategy based on sliding mode techniques is proposed for a class of nonlinear interconnected systems in regular form. All the isolated subsystems and interconnections are fully nonlinear. It is not required that the nominal isolated subsystems are either linearizable or partially linearizable. The uncertainties are nonlinear and bounded by nonlinear functions. Specifically, uncertainties in the input distribution and interconnections are considered. Under mild conditions, sliding mode controllers for each subsystem are designed by only employing local information. Sufficient conditions are developed under which information on the interconnections is employed for decentralised controller design to reduce conservatism. The bounds on the uncertainties have more general forms compared with previous work. A simulation example is used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method

Decentralised sliding mode control for nonlinear interconnected systems with uncertainties

With the advances in science and technology, nonlinear large-scale interconnected systems have widely appeared in the real life. Traditional centralised control methods have inevitable disadvantages when they are used to deal with complex nonlinear interconnected systems with uncertainties. In connection with this, people desire to develop the novel control strategy which can be applied to complex interconnected systems. Therefore, decentralised sliding mode control (SMC) for interconnected systems has attracted great attention in related fields due to its advantages, for instance, simple structure, low cost of calculation, fast response, reduced-order sliding mode dynamics and insensitivity to matched variation of parameters and disturbances in systems. This thesis focuses on the development of decentralised SMC for nonlinear interconnected systems with uncertainties under certain assumptions. Several methods and different techniques have been considered in design of the controller to improve the robustness. The main contributions of this thesis include: • The state feedback decentralised SMC is developed for nonlinear interconnected systems with matched uncertainty and mismatched unknown interconnections. A state feedback decentralised SMC strategy, under the assumption that all system states are accessible, is proposed to attenuate the impact of the uncertainties by using bounds on uncertainties and interconnections. The bounds used in the design are fully nonlinear which provide higher applicability for different complex interconnected systems. Especially, for this fully nonlinear system, the proposed method does not need to use the technique of linearisation, which is widely used in existing work to deal with nonlinear interconnected systems with uncertainties. • The dynamic observer is applied to complex nonlinear interconnected systems with matched and mismatched uncertainties. This dynamic observer can estimate the system states which can not be achieved during the controller design. The proposed method has great identification ability with small estimated errors for the states of nonlinear interconnected systems with matched and mismatched uncertainties. It should be pointed out that the considered uncertainties of nonlinear interconnected systems have general forms, which means that the proposed method can be effectively used in more generalised nonlinear interconnected systems. • A variable structure observer-based decentralised SMC is proposed to control a class of nonlinear interconnected systems with matched and mismatched uncertainties. Based on the designed dynamic observer, a dynamic decentralised output feedback SMC using outputs and estimated states is presented to control the interconnected systems with matched and mismatched uncertainties. The nonlinear interconnections are employed in the control design to reduce the conservatism of the developed results. The bounds of the uncertainties are relaxed which are nonlinear and take more general forms. Moreover, the limitation for the interconnected system is reduced when compared with the existing results in which the proposed strategies adopt the full-order observer. Besides that, the presented method improves the robustness of nonlinear interconnected systems to be against the effects of uncertainties. This thesis also provides several numerical and practical simulations to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed decentralised SMC for nonlinear interconnected systems with matched uncertainty, mismatched uncertainty and nonlinear interconnections

Decentralised control for complex systems - An invited survey

© 2014 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd. With the advancement of science and technology, practical systems are becoming more complex. Decentralised control has been recognised as a practical, feasible and powerful tool for application to large scale interconnected systems. In this paper, past and recent results relating to decentralised control of complex large scale interconnected systems are reviewed. Decentralised control based on modern control approaches such as variable structure techniques, adaptive control and backstepping approaches are discussed. It is well known that system structure can be employed to reduce conservatism in the control design and decentralised control for interconnected systems with similar and symmetric structure is explored. Decentralised control of singular large scale systems is also reviewed in this paper

State Feedback Sliding Mode Control of Complex Systems with Applications

This thesis concerns the development of robust nonlinear control design for complex systems including nonholonomic systems and large-scale systems using sliding mode control (SMC) techniques under the assumption that all system state variables are accessible for design. The main developments in this thesis include: 1). The concept of generalised regular form and design of a novel sliding function. The mathematical definition of generalised regular form is proposed for the first time. It is an extension of the classical regular form, which makes SMC applicable to a wider class of nonlinear systems. A novel sliding function design, which is based on the global implicit function theorem, is proposed to guarantee unique sliding mode dynamics. 2). The development of decentralised SMC for large-scale interconnected systems. For systems with uncertain interconnections which possess the superposition property, a decentralised control scheme is presented to counteract the effect of the uncertainty by using bounds on uncertainties and interconnections. The bounds used in the design are nonlinear functions instead of constant, linear or polynomial functions. The design strategy has also been expanded to a fully nonlinear case for interconnected systems in the generalised regular form. 3). Robust decentralised SMC for a class of nonlinear systems with uncertainties in input distribution. A system with uncertainties in input distribution is full of challenges. A novel method is proposed to deal with such uncertainties for a class of nonlinear interconnected systems. The designed decentralised SMC enhances the robustness of the controlled systems. This thesis also provides case studies of three applications for the proposed approaches. The existence of the generalised regular form is verified in the trajectory tracking control of a wheeled mobile robot (WMR) system. Both simulations and experiments on the WMR are given to demonstrate the validity and effectiveness of the generalised regular form-based SMC design. A continuous stirred tank reactor (CSTR) system and a longitudinal vehicle-following system are used to test the proposed decentralised SMC schemes. An expanded vehicle-following system with both longitudinal and lateral controllers has been developed to demonstrate the robust control design for system with uncertainties in input distribution

Event-triggered robust control for multi-player nonzero-sum games with input constraints and mismatched uncertainties

In this article, an event-triggered robust control (ETRC) method is investigated for multi-player nonzero-sum games of continuous-time input constrained nonlinear systems with mismatched uncertainties. By constructing an auxiliary system and designing an appropriate value function, the robust control problem of input constrained nonlinear systems is transformed into an optimal regulation problem. Then, a critic neural network (NN) is adopted to approximate the value function of each player for solving the event-triggered coupled Hamilton-Jacobi equation and obtaining control laws. Based on a designed event-triggering condition, control laws are updated when events occur only. Thus, both computational burden and communication bandwidth are reduced. We prove that the weight approximation errors of critic NNs and the closed-loop uncertain multi-player system states are all uniformly ultimately bounded thanks to the Lyapunov's direct method. Finally, two examples are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the developed ETRC method

System structure based decentralized sliding mode output tracking control for nonlinear interconnected systems

In this article, a decentralized tracking control scheme is proposed for a class of nonlinear interconnected systems with uncertainties using sliding mode technique. Both matched nonlinear uncertainty and mismatched known nonlinear interconnections are considered. Under the condition that the nominal isolated subsystems have relative degrees, a geometric transformation is applied to transfer the interconnected system into a new nonlinear interconnected system with a special structure to facilitate the system analysis and design. Then, a composite sliding surface is designed in terms of tracking errors, and decentralized controllers are proposed to drive the system states to the designed sliding surface in finite time and maintain a sliding motion on it thereafter. A set of conditions are developed to guarantee that the output tracking errors converge to zero asymptotically while all system state variables are bounded. The considered interconnected systems are nonlinear and it is not required that either the isolated subsystems or the isolated nominal subsystems are linearizable. The desired output signals are allowed to be time-varying. Finally, the developed results are applied to an inverted coupled-pendulum system. Simulation demonstrates that the proposed control scheme is effective

Decentralised Sliding Mode Control for Nonlinear Interconnected Systems with Unknown Interconnections

In this paper, a novel decentralised robust state feedback sliding mode control is presented to stabilise a class of nonlinear interconnected systems with matched uncertainty and unknown interconnections. A composite sliding surface is designed, and a set of conditions are developed to guarantee that the corresponding sliding motion is uniformly asymptotically stable. Then, a decentralised state feedback sliding mode control is proposed to drive interconnected systems to the designed sliding surface in finite time, and sliding motion occurs thereafter. The bounds on the uncertainties and interconnections are known nonlinear functions, which are employed in the control design to reject the effects of uncertainties and unknown interconnections to enhance the robustness. Finally, a numerical simulation example is given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control strategy

Decentralised Stabilisation of Nonlinear Time Delay Interconnected Systems

A decentralised state feedback control scheme is proposed to stabilise a class of nonlinear interconnected systems asymptotically based on the characteristics of the system structure. Under the condition that all the nominal isolated subsystems have uniform relative degree, the considered class of interconnected systems is transferred to a new interconnected system formed of single input systems, which facilitates the decentralised control design. A new term, weak mismatched uncertainty, is introduced for the first time to recognise a class of mismatched uncertainties in the isolated subsystems. The study shows that the effects of both matched and weak mismatched uncertainties in the isolated subsystems can be rejected completely by appropriate choice of control, and the effects of matched interconnections can be largely reduced if the control gain is sufficiently high