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

Analysis of Implicit Uncertain Systems. Part II: Constant Matrix Problems and Application to Robust H2 Analysis

This paper introduces an implicit framework for the analysis of uncertain systems, of which the general properties were described in Part I. In Part II, the theory is specialized to problems which admit a finite dimensional formulation. A constant matrix version of implicit analysis is presented, leading to a generalization of the structured singular value μ as the stability measure; upper bounds are developed and analyzed in detail. An application of this framework results in a practical method for robust H2 analysis: computing robust performance in the presence of norm-bounded perturbations and white-noise disturbances

Robust Constrained Model Predictive Control using Linear Matrix Inequalities

The primary disadvantage of current design techniques for model predictive control (MPC) is their inability to deal explicitly with plant model uncertainty. In this paper, we present a new approach for robust MPC synthesis which allows explicit incorporation of the description of plant uncertainty in the problem formulation. The uncertainty is expressed both in the time domain and the frequency domain. The goal is to design, at each time step, a state-feedback control law which minimizes a "worst-case" infinite horizon objective function, subject to constraints on the control input and plant output. Using standard techniques, the problem of minimizing an upper bound on the "worst-case" objective function, subject to input and output constraints, is reduced to a convex optimization involving linear matrix inequalities (LMIs). It is shown that the feasible receding horizon state-feedback control design robustly stabilizes the set of uncertain plants under consideration. Several extensions, such as application to systems with time-delays and problems involving constant set-point tracking, trajectory tracking and disturbance rejection, which follow naturally from our formulation, are discussed. The controller design procedure is illustrated with two examples. Finally, conclusions are presented

Nonlinear and adaptive control

The primary thrust of the research was to conduct fundamental research in the theories and methodologies for designing complex high-performance multivariable feedback control systems; and to conduct feasibiltiy studies in application areas of interest to NASA sponsors that point out advantages and shortcomings of available control system design methodologies

Reduced Order Controller Design for Robust Output Regulation

We study robust output regulation for parabolic partial differential equations and other infinite-dimensional linear systems with analytic semigroups. As our main results we show that robust output tracking and disturbance rejection for our class of systems can be achieved using a finite-dimensional controller and present algorithms for construction of two different internal model based robust controllers. The controller parameters are chosen based on a Galerkin approximation of the original PDE system and employ balanced truncation to reduce the orders of the controllers. In the second part of the paper we design controllers for robust output tracking and disturbance rejection for a 1D reaction-diffusion equation with boundary disturbances, a 2D diffusion-convection equation, and a 1D beam equation with Kelvin-Voigt damping.Comment: Revised version with minor improvements and corrections. 28 pages, 9 figures. Accepted for publication in the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Contro

Vibration suppression in multi-body systems by means of disturbance filter design methods

This paper addresses the problem of interaction in mechanical multi-body systems and shows that subsystem interaction can be considerably minimized while increasing performance if an efficient disturbance model is used. In order to illustrate the advantage of the proposed intelligent disturbance filter, two linear model based techniques are considered: IMC and the model based predictive (MPC) approach. As an illustrative example, multivariable mass-spring-damper and quarter car systems are presented. An adaptation mechanism is introduced to account for linear parameter varying LPV conditions. In this paper we show that, even if the IMC control strategy was not designed for MIMO systems, if a proper filter is used, IMC can successfully deal with disturbance rejection in a multivariable system, and the results obtained are comparable with those obtained by a MIMO predictive control approach. The results suggest that both methods perform equally well, with similar numerical complexity and implementation effort