Optimal controller synthesis is a bilinear problem and hence difficult to solve in a computationally efficient manner. We are able to resolve this bilinearity for systems with delay by first convexifying the problem in infinite-dimensions - formulating the $H_\infty$ optimal state-feedback controller synthesis problem for distributed-parameter systems as a Linear Operator Inequality - a form of convex optimization with operator variables. Next, we use positive matrices to parameterize positive `complete quadratic' operators - allowing the controller synthesis problem to be solved using Semidefinite Programming (SDP). We then use the solution to this SDP to calculate the feedback gains and provide effective methods for real-time implementation. Finally, we use several test cases to verify that the resulting controllers are \textit{optimal} to several decimal places as measured by the minimal achievable closed-loop $H_\infty$ norm, and as compared against controllers designed using high-order Padé approximations.
In this paper, we study the stability of suboptimal H-infinity controllers for time-delay systems. The optimal H-infinity controller may have finitely or infinitely many unstable poles. A stable suboptimal H-infinity controller design procedure is given for each of these cases. The design methods are illustrated with examples.
In this work, we present a compositional safety controller synthesis approach for the class of discrete-time linear control systems. Here, we leverage a state-of-the-art result on the computation of robust controlled invariant sets. To tackle the complexity of controller synthesis over complex interconnected systems, this paper introduces a decentralized controller synthesis scheme. Rather than treating the interconnected system as a whole, we first design local safety controllers for each subsystem separately to enforce local safety properties, with polytopic state and input constraints as we…
The skew Toeplitz approach is one of the well developed methods to design H-infinity controllers for infinite dimensional systems. In order to be able to use this method the plant needs to be factorized in some special manner. This paper investigates the largest class of SISO time delay systems for which the special factorizations required by the skew Toeplitz approach can be done. Reliable implementation of the optimal controller is also discussed. It is shown that the finite impulse response (FIR) block structure appears in these controllers not only for plants with I/O delays, but also for …
This paper investigates stable suboptimal H-infinity controllers for a class of single-input single-output time-delay systems. For a given plant and weighting functions, the optimal controller minimizing the mixed sensitivity (and the central suboptimal controller) may be unstable with finitely or infinitely many poles in complex right half-plane. For each of these cases search algorithms are proposed to find stable suboptimal H-infinity controllers. These design methods are illustrated with examples.
In this paper, we introduce NNSynth, a new framework that uses machine learning techniques to guide the design of abstraction-based controllers with correctness guarantees. NNSynth utilizes neural networks (NNs) to guide the search over the space of controllers. The trained neural networks are "projected" and used for constructing a "local" abstraction of the system. An abstraction-based controller is then synthesized from such "local" abstractions. If a controller that satisfies the specifications is not found, then the best found controller is "lifted" to a neural network for additional trai…
In this paper, we propose a formal controller synthesis approach for integrating a population of plug-in electric vehicles in frequency regulation of power systems. This approach is the first application of formal methods to the smart grids in particular to the frequency regulation of power systems. We design and simulate a novel symbolic controller for the Great Britain power system. The proposed controller enhances the frequency response behaviour of the system when encountered with a large outage event. The symbolic controller guarantees the settlement of the after-event's frequency in the …
The current limitation in the synthesis of distributed $\mathscr{H}_2$ controllers for linear interconnected systems is scalability due to non-convex or unstructured synthesis conditions. In this paper we develop convex and structured conditions for the existence of a distributed $\mathscr{H}_2$ controller for discrete-time interconnected systems with an interconnection structure that corresponds to an arbitrary graph. Neutral interconnections and a storage function with a block-diagonal structure are utilized to attain coupling conditions that are of a considerably lower computational complex…
We show that given a desired closed-loop response for a system, there exists an affine subspace of controllers that achieve this response. By leveraging the existence of this subspace, we are able to separate controller design from closed-loop design by first synthesizing the desired closed-loop response and then synthesizing a controller that achieves the desired response. This is a useful extension to the recently introduced System Level Synthesis framework, in which the controller and closed-loop response are jointly synthesized and we cannot enforce controller-specific constraints without …
Weighted sensitivity minimization is studied within the framework of strongly stabilizing (stable) H-infinity controller design for a class of infinite dimensional systems. This problem has been solved by Ganesh and Pearson, [11], for finite dimensional plants using Nevanlinna-Pick interpolation. We extend their technique to a class of unstable time delay systems. Moreover, we illustrate suboptimal solutions, and their robust implementation.
The approach in Foias et al. (1996) is one of the well-developed methods to design H-infinity controllers for general infinite dimensional systems. This approach is applicable if the plant admits a special coprime inner/outer factorization. We give the largest class of single-input-single-output (SISO) time delay systems for which this factorization is possible and factorize the admissible plants. Based on this factorization, we compute the optimal H-infinity performance and eliminate unstable pole-zero cancellations in the optimal H-infinity controller. We extend the results on the finite imp…
In this paper sensitivity minimization problem is considered for a class of unstable time delay systems. Our goal is to find a stable controller stabilizing the feedback system and giving rise to smallest H-infinity norm for the sensitivity function. This problem has been solved by Ganesh and Pearson (1986) for finite dimensional plants using Nevanlinna-Pick interpolation. We extend their technique to include possibly unstable time delay systems. Moreover, we illustrate suboptimal solutions, and their robust implementation.
We design fixed-order strong H-infinity controllers for general time-delay systems. The designer chooses the controller order and may introduce constant time-delays in the controller. We represent the closed-loop system of the plant and the controller as delay differential algebraic equations (DDAEs). This representation deals with any interconnection of systems with time-delays without any elimination techniques. We present a numerical algorithm to compute the strong H-infinity norm for DDAEs which is robust to arbitrarily small delay perturbations, unlike the standard H-infinity norm. We opt…
This paper studies the controller synthesis problem for Linear Temporal Logic (LTL) specifications using (constrained) zonotope techniques. First, we implement (constrained) zonotope techniques to partition the state space and further to verify whether the LTL specification can be satisfied. Once the LTL specification can be satisfied, the next step is to design a controller to guarantee the satisfaction of the LTL specification for dynamic systems. Based on the verification of the LTL specification, an abstraction-based control design approach is proposed in this paper: a novel abstraction co…
We present a novel class of nonlinear controllers that interpolates among differently behaving linear controllers as a case study for recently proposed Linear and Nonlinear System Level Synthesis framework. The structure of the nonlinear controller allows for simultaneously satisfying performance and safety objectives defined for small- and large-disturbance regimes. The proposed controller is distributed, handles delays, sparse actuation, and localizes disturbances. We show our nonlinear controller always outperforms its linear counterpart for constrained LQR problems. We further demonstrate …
The increase in available data and complexity of dynamical systems has sparked the research on data-based system performance analysis and controller design. Recent approaches can guarantee performance and robust controller synthesis based on noisy input-state data of a single dynamical system. In this paper, we extend a recent data-based approach for guaranteed performance analysis to distributed analysis of interconnected linear systems. We present a new set of sufficient LMI conditions based on noisy input-state data that guarantees $\mathcal{H}_\infty$ performance and have a structure that …
An eigenvalue based framework is developed for the stability analysis and stabilization of coupled systems with time-delays, which are naturally described by delay differential algebraic equations. The spectral properties of these equations are analyzed and their stability properties are studied, taking into account the effect of small delay perturbations. Subsequently, numerical methods for stability assessment and for designing stabilizing controllers with a prescribed structure or order, based on a direct optimization approach, are briefly addressed. The effectiveness of the approach is ill…
Delays are ubiquitous in modern hybrid systems, which exhibit both continuous and discrete dynamical behaviors. Induced by signal transmission, conversion, the nature of plants, and so on, delays may appear either in the continuous evolution of a hybrid system such that the evolution depends not only on the present state but also on its execution history, or in the discrete switching between its different control modes. In this paper we come up with a new model of hybrid systems, called \emph{delay hybrid automata}, to capture the dynamics of systems with the aforementioned two kinds of delays…
Synthesizing controllers directly from frequency-domain measurement data is a powerful tool in the linear time-invariant framework. Ever-increasing performance requirements necessitate extending these approaches to account for plant variations. The aim of this paper is to develop frequency-domain analysis and synthesis conditions for local internal stability and $\mathcal{H}_\infty$-performance of single-input single-output linear parameter-varying systems. The developed synthesis procedure only requires frequency-domain measurement data of the system and does not need a parametric model of th…
Robust controller synthesis attracts reviving research interest, driven by the rise of learning-based systems where uncertainty and perturbation are ubiquitous. Facing an uncertain situation, a robustly stabilizing controller should maintain stability while operating under a perturbed system deviating from its nominal specification. There have been numerous results for robust controller synthesis in multiple forms and with various goals, including mu-synthesis, robust primal-dual Youla, robust input-output, and robust system level parameterizations. However, their connections with one another …
Ensuring constraint satisfaction in large-scale systems with hard constraints is vital in many safety critical systems. The challenge is to design controllers that are efficiently synthesized offline, easily implementable online, and provide formal correctness guarantees. In this paper, we provide a method to compute correct-by-construction controllers for a network of coupled linear systems with additive bounded disturbances such that i) the design of the controllers is fully compositional - we use an optimization-based approach that iteratively computes subsystem-level assume-guarantee contr…
This paper proposes a method to synthesise controllers for cyber-physical systems such that the controlled systems satisfy specifications given as linear temporal logic formulas. The focus is on systems with disturbance, where future states cannot be predicted exactly due to uncertainty in the environment. The approach used to solve this problem is to first construct a finite-state abstraction of the original system and then synthesise a controller for the abstract system. For this approach, the robust stutter bisimulation relation is introduced, which preserves the existence of controllers fo…
This paper proposes a framework for automatic formal controller synthesis for general hybrid systems with a subset of safety and reachability specifications. The framework uses genetic programming to automatically co-synthesize controllers and candidate Lyapunov-like functions. These candidate Lyapunov-like functions are used to formally verify the control specification, and their correctness is proven using a Satisfiability Modulo Theories solver. The advantages of this approach are: no restriction is made to polynomial systems, the synthesized controllers are expressed as compact expressions…
We propose a counterexample-guided inductive synthesis framework for the formal synthesis of closed-form sampled-data controllers for nonlinear systems to meet STL specifications over finite-time trajectories. Rather than stating the STL specification for a single initial condition, we consider an (infinite and bounded) set of initial conditions. Candidate solutions are proposed using genetic programming, which evolves controllers based on a finite number of simulations. Subsequently, the best candidate is verified using reachability analysis; if the candidate solution does not satisfy the spe…
This paper presents an algebraic technique to compute the maximum time-delay that can be accepted in the control loop of a Brushless DC Motor (BLDCM) speed controller before the closed loop response becomes unstable. Using a recently proposed time-delay stability analysis methodology, we derive accurate stability conditions for the BLDCM speed controller. The results of applying the new method show that tuning the PI controller for very fast response in the order of magnitude of the BLDCM mechanical time constant cause the time-delay to significantly affect the system stability.
An eigenvalue based framework is developed for the H-infinity norm analysis and its norm minimization of coupled systems with time-delays, which are naturally described by delay differential algebraic equations (DDAEs). For these equations H-infinity norms are analyzed and their sensitivity with respect to small delay perturbations is studied. Subsequently, numerical methods for the H-infinity norm computation and for designing controllers minimizing the H-infinity norm with a prescribed structure or order, based on a direct optimization approach, are briefly addressed. The effectiveness of th…
Electrolysis systems use proportional-integral-derivative (PID) temperature controllers to maintain stack temperatures around set points. However, heat transfer delays in electrolysis systems cause manual tuning of PID temperature controllers to be time-consuming, and temperature oscillations often occur. This paper focuses on the design of the PID temperature controller for an alkaline electrolysis system to achieve fast and stable temperature control. A thermal dynamic model of an electrolysis system is established in the frequency-domain for controller designs. Based on this model, the temp…
In this paper, we focus on mitigating the computational complexity in abstraction-based controller synthesis for interconnected control systems. To do so, we provide a compositional framework for the construction of abstractions for interconnected systems and a bottom-up controller synthesis scheme. In particular, we propose a notion of approximate composition which makes it possible to compute an abstraction of the global interconnected system from the abstractions (possibly of different types) of its components. Finally, by leveraging our notion of approximate composition, we propose a botto…
We address the problem of sparsity-promoting optimal control of cyber-physical systems with feedback delays. The delays are categorized into two classes - namely, intra-layer delay, and inter-layer delay between the cyber and the physical layers. Our objective is to minimize the H2-norm of the closed-loop system by designing an optimal combination of these two delays along with a sparse state-feedback controller, while respecting a given bandwidth constraint. We propose a two-loop optimization algorithm for this. The inner loop, based on alternating directions method of multipliers (ADMM), han…
Direct Adaptive Controller for Uncertain MIMO Dynamic Systems with Time-varying Delay and Dead-zone Inputs
South China University of Technology（华南理工大学）；Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)（麻省理工学院）；Northeastern University（东北大学）；University of Science and Technology Beijing（北京科技大学）
Synthesizing controllers for large, complex, and distributed systems is a challenging task. Numerous proposed methods exist in the literature, but it is difficult for practitioners to apply them -- most proposed synthesis methods lack ready-to-use software implementations, and existing proprietary components are too rigid to extend to general systems. To address this gap, we develop SLSpy, a framework for controller synthesis, comparison, and testing. SLSpy implements a highly extensible software framework which provides two essential workflows: synthesis and simulation. The workflows are buil…
In this note, we present an effective solution to the stabilization of linear input delay systems subject to dissipative constraints while all the effect of input delay is compensated by a controller with novel structure. The method is inspired by the recent development in the mathematical treatment of distributed delays and predictor controllers, which are critical for the derivation of the solution. An important conceptual innovation is the use of a parameterized dynamical state feedback controller (DSFC), where the dimension of the controller equals the dimension of the control input. A suf…
This paper studies stochastic aperiodic stabilization of a networked control system (NCS) consisting of a continuous-time plant and a discrete-time controller. The plant and the controller are assumed to be connected by communication channels with i.i.d. time-varying delays. The delays are theoretically not required to be bounded even when the plant is unstable in the deterministic sense. In our NCS, the sampling interval is supposed to be determined directly by such communication delays. A necessary and sufficient inequality condition is presented for designing a state-feedback controller sta…
Controller Synthesis with Inductive Proofs for Piecewise Linear Systems: an SMT-based Algorithm
Coordinated Science Laboratory, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign（伊利诺伊大学厄巴纳-香槟分校协同科学实验室）；Department of Computer Science, Rice University（莱斯大学计算机科学系）
In networked control systems, often the sensory signals are quantized before being transmitted to the controller. Consequently, performance is affected by the coarseness of this quantization process. Modern communication technologies allow users to obtain resolution-varying quantized measurements based on the prices paid. In this paper, we consider optimal controller synthesis of a Quantized-Feedback Linear-Quadratic-Gaussian (QF-LQG) system where the measurements are to be quantized before being transmitted to the controller. The system is presented with several choices of quantizers, along w…
