Robust Stability of Iterative Learning Control Schemes

A notion of robust stability is developed for iterative learning control in the context of disturbance attenuation. The size of the unmodelled dynamics is captured via a gap distance, which in turn is related to the standard H2 gap metric, and the resulting robustness certificate is qualitatively equivalent to that obtained in classical robust H∞ theory. A bound on the robust stability margin for a specific adaptive ILC design is established

Iterative Learning Control design for uncertain and time-windowed systems

Iterative Learning Control (ILC) is a control strategy capable of dramatically increasing the performance of systems that perform batch repetitive tasks. This performance improvement is achieved by iteratively updating the command signal, using measured error data from previous trials, i.e., by learning from past experience. This thesis deals with ILC for time-windowed and uncertain systems. With the term "time-windowed systems", we mean systems in which actuation and measurement time intervals differ. With "uncertain systems", we refer to systems whose behavior is represented by incomplete or inaccurate models. To study the ILC design issues for time-windowed systems, we consider the task of residual vibration suppression in point-to-point motion problems. In this application, time windows are used to modify the original system to comply with the task. With the properties of the time-windowed system resulting in nonconverging behavior of the original ILC controlled system, we introduce a novel ILC design framework in which convergence can be achieved. Additionally, this framework reveals new design freedom in ILC for point-to-point motion problems, which is unknown in "standard" ILC. Theoretical results concerning the problem formulation and control design for these systems are supported by experimental results on a SISO and MIMO flexible structure. The analysis and design results of ILC for time-windowed systems are subsequently extended to the whole class of linear systems whose input and output are filtered with basis functions (which include time windows). Analysis and design theory of ILC for this class of systems reveals how different ILC objectives can be reached by design of separate parts of the ILC controller. Our research on ILC for uncertain systems is divided into two parts. In the first part, we formulate an approach to analyze the robustness properties of existing ILC controllers, using well developed µ theory. To exemplify our findings, we analyze the robustness properties of linear quadratic (LQ) norm optimal ILC controllers. Moreover, we show that the approach is applicable to the class of linear trial invariant ILC controlled systems with basis functions. In the second part, we present a finite time interval robust ILC control strategy that is robust against model uncertainty as given by an additive uncertainty model. For that, we exploit H1 control theory, however, modified such that the controller is not restricted to be causal and operates on a finite time interval. Furthermore, we optimize the robust controller so as to optimize performance while remaining robustly monotonically convergent. By means of experiments on a SISO flexible system, we show that this control strategy can indeed outperform LQ norm optimal ILC and causal robust ILC control strategies

Relaxing Fundamental Assumptions in Iterative Learning Control

Iterative learning control (ILC) is perhaps best decribed as an open loop feedforward control technique where the feedforward signal is learned through repetition of a single task. As the name suggests, given a dynamic system operating on a finite time horizon with the same desired trajectory, ILC aims to iteratively construct the inverse image (or its approximation) of the desired trajectory to improve transient tracking. In the literature, ILC is often interpreted as feedback control in the iteration domain due to the fact that learning controllers use information from past trials to drive the tracking error towards zero. However, despite the significant body of literature and powerful features, ILC is yet to reach widespread adoption by the control community, due to several assumptions that restrict its generality when compared to feedback control. In this dissertation, we relax some of these assumptions, mainly the fundamental invariance assumption, and move from the idea of learning through repetition to two dimensional systems, specifically repetitive processes, that appear in the modeling of engineering applications such as additive manufacturing, and sketch out future research directions for increased practicality: We develop an L1 adaptive feedback control based ILC architecture for increased robustness, fast convergence, and high performance under time varying uncertainties and disturbances. Simulation studies of the behavior of this combined L1-ILC scheme under iteration varying uncertainties lead us to the robust stability analysis of iteration varying systems, where we show that these systems are guaranteed to be stable when the ILC update laws are designed to be robust, which can be done using existing methods from the literature. As a next step to the signal space approach adopted in the analysis of iteration varying systems, we shift the focus of our work to repetitive processes, and show that the exponential stability of a nonlinear repetitive system is equivalent to that of its linearization, and consequently uniform stability of the corresponding state space matrix.PhDElectrical Engineering: SystemsUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/133232/1/altin_1.pd

Feedback-Based Iterative Learning Control for MIMO LTI Systems Feedback-Based Iterative Learning Control for MIMO LTI Systems

Abstract: This paper proposes a necessary and sufficient condition of convergence in the 2 Lnorm sense for a feedback-based iterative learning control (ILC) system including a multi-input multi-output (MIMO) linear time-invariant (LTI) plant. It is shown that the convergence conditions for a nominal plant and an uncertain plant are equal to the nominal performance condition and the robust performance condition in the feedback control theory, respectively. Moreover, no additional effort is required to design an iterative learning controller because the performance weighting matrix is used as an iterative learning controller. By proving that the least upper bound of the 2 L -norm of the remaining tracking error is less than that of the initial tracking error, this paper shows that the iterative learning controller combined with the feedback controller is more effective to reduce the tracking error than only the feedback controller. The validity of the proposed method is verified through computer simulations