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

An autoregressive (AR) model based stochastic unknown input realization and filtering technique

This paper studies the state estimation problem of linear discrete-time systems with stochastic unknown inputs. The unknown input is a wide-sense stationary process while no other prior informaton needs to be known. We propose an autoregressive (AR) model based unknown input realization technique which allows us to recover the input statistics from the output data by solving an appropriate least squares problem, then fit an AR model to the recovered input statistics and construct an innovations model of the unknown inputs using the eigensystem realization algorithm (ERA). An augmented state system is constructed and the standard Kalman filter is applied for state estimation. A reduced order model (ROM) filter is also introduced to reduce the computational cost of the Kalman filter. Two numerical examples are given to illustrate the procedure.Comment: 14 page

A review of convex approaches for control, observation and safety of linear parameter varying and Takagi-Sugeno systems

This paper provides a review about the concept of convex systems based on Takagi-Sugeno, linear parameter varying (LPV) and quasi-LPV modeling. These paradigms are capable of hiding the nonlinearities by means of an equivalent description which uses a set of linear models interpolated by appropriately defined weighing functions. Convex systems have become very popular since they allow applying extended linear techniques based on linear matrix inequalities (LMIs) to complex nonlinear systems. This survey aims at providing the reader with a significant overview of the existing LMI-based techniques for convex systems in the fields of control, observation and safety. Firstly, a detailed review of stability, feedback, tracking and model predictive control (MPC) convex controllers is considered. Secondly, the problem of state estimation is addressed through the design of proportional, proportional-integral, unknown input and descriptor observers. Finally, safety of convex systems is discussed by describing popular techniques for fault diagnosis and fault tolerant control (FTC).Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Robust Fault Detection of Switched Linear Systems with State Delays

This correspondence deals with the problem of robust fault detection for discrete-time switched systems with state delays under an arbitrary switching signal. The fault detection filter is used as the residual generator, in which the filter parameters are dependent on the system mode. Attention is focused on designing the robust fault detection filter such that, for unknown inputs, control inputs, and model uncertainties, the estimation error between the residuals and faults is minimized. The problem of robust fault detection is converted into an H infin-filtering problem. By a switched Lyapunov functional approach, a sufficient condition for the solvability of this problem is established in terms of linear matrix inequalities. A numerical example is provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method

Fault estimation algorithms: design and verification

The research in this thesis is undertaken by observing that modern systems are becoming more and more complex and safety-critical due to the increasing requirements on system smartness and autonomy, and as a result health monitoring system needs to be developed to meet the requirements on system safety and reliability. The state-of-the-art approaches to monitoring system status are model based Fault Diagnosis (FD) systems, which can fuse the advantages of system physical modelling and sensors' characteristics. A number of model based FD approaches have been proposed. The conventional residual based approaches by monitoring system output estimation errors, however, may have certain limitations such as complex diagnosis logic for fault isolation, less sensitiveness to system faults and high computation load. More importantly, little attention has been paid to the problem of fault diagnosis system verification which answers the question that under what condition (i.e., level of uncertainties) a fault diagnosis system is valid. To this end, this thesis investigates the design and verification of fault diagnosis algorithms. It first highlights the differences between two popular FD approaches (i.e., residual based and fault estimation based) through a case study. On this basis, a set of uncertainty estimation algorithms are proposed to generate fault estimates according to different specifications after interpreting the FD problem as an uncertainty estimation problem. Then FD algorithm verification and threshold selection are investigated considering that there are always some mismatches between the real plant and the mathematical model used for FD observer design. Reachability analysis is drawn to evaluate the effect of uncertainties and faults such that it can be quantitatively verified under what condition a FD algorithm is valid. First the proposed fault estimation algorithms in this thesis, on the one hand, extend the existing approaches by pooling the available prior information such that performance can be enhanced, and on the other hand relax the existence condition and reduce the computation load by exploiting the reduced order observer structure. Second, the proposed framework for fault diagnosis system verification bridges the gap between academia and industry since on the one hand a given FD algorithm can be verified under what condition it is effective, and on the other hand different FD algorithms can be compared and selected for different application scenarios. It should be highlighted that although the algorithm design and verification are for fault diagnosis systems, they can also be applied for other systems such as disturbance rejection control system among many others