In this paper, we investigate optimal control of network-coupled subsystems where the dynamics and the cost couplings depend on an underlying undirected weighted graph. The graph coupling matrix in the dynamics may be the adjacency matrix, the Laplacian matrix, or any other symmetric matrix corresponding to the underlying graph. The cost couplings can be any polynomial function of the underlying coupling matrix. We use the spectral decomposition of the graph coupling matrix to decompose the overall system into (L+1) systems with decoupled dynamics and cost, where L is the rank of the coupling matrix. Furthermore, the optimal control input at each subsystem can be computed by solving (Ldist + 1) decoupled Riccati equations where Ldist (Ldist \leq L) is the number of distinct non-zero eigenvalues of the coupling matrix. A salient feature of the result is that the solution complexity depends on the number of distinct eigenvalues of the coupling matrix rather than the size of the network. Therefore, the proposed solution framework provides a scalable method for synthesizing and implementing optimal control laws for large-scale network-coupled subsystems.
In this work, we propose a subsystem decomposition approach and a distributed estimation scheme for a class of implicit two-time-scale nonlinear systems. Taking the advantage of the two-time-scale separation, these processes are decomposed into smaller subsystems such as fast subsystem and slow subsystem. In the proposed method, an approach, composite solution, combines the approximate solutions obtained from both fast and slow subsystems. Based on the fast and slow subsystems, a distributed state estimation scheme is proposed to handle the implicit time-scale multiplicity. In the proposed des…
A hierarchical Model Predictive Control (MPC) formulation is presented for coupled discrete-time linear systems with state and input constraints. Compared to a centralized approach, a two-level hierarchical controller, with one controller in the upper-level and one controller per subsystem in the lower-level, can significantly reduce the computational cost associated with MPC. Hierarchical coordination is achieved using adjustable tubes, which are optimized by the upper-level controller and bound permissible lower-level controller deviations from the system trajectories determined by the upper…
This paper proposes a novel two-stage hybrid domain decomposition algorithm to speed up the dynamic simulations and the analysis of power systems that can be computationally demanding due to the high penetration of renewables. On the first level of the decomposition, a Schwarz-based strategy is used to decouple the original problem into various subsystems through boundary variable relaxation, while on the second level, each decoupled subsystem is further decomposed into subdomains that are solved independently using the Schur-complement approach. Convergence is checked in both stages to ensure…
In this work, we present a distributed framework based on the graph algorithm for computing control invariant set for nonlinear cascade systems. The proposed algorithm exploits the structure of the interconnections within a process network. First, the overall system is decomposed into several subsystems with overlapping states. Second, the control invariant set for the subsystems are computed in a distributed manner. Finally, an approximation of the control invariant set for the overall system is reconstructed from the subsystem solutions and validated. We demonstrate the efficacy and converge…
University of Southern California（南加州大学）；McGill University（麦吉尔大学）；Preferred Networks America
We consider the problem of controlling an unknown linear quadratic Gaussian (LQG) system consisting of multiple subsystems connected over a network. Our goal is to minimize and quantify the regret (i.e. loss in performance) of our strategy with respect to an oracle who knows the system model. Viewing the interconnected subsystems globally and directly using existing LQG learning algorithms for the global system results in a regret that increases super-linearly with the number of subsystems. Instead, we propose a new Thompson sampling based learning algorithm which exploits the structure of the…
Scalable Distributed Nonlinear Control Under Flatness-Preserving Coupling
GRASP Laboratory, University of Pennsylvania（宾夕法尼亚大学 GRASP 实验室）；Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Cornell University（康奈尔大学 Sibley 机械与航空航天工程学院）
This paper studies the controllability of networked relative coupling systems (NRCSs), in which subsystems are of fixed high-order linear dynamics and coupled through relative variables depending on their neighbors, from a structural perspective. The purpose is to explore conditions for subsystem dynamics and network topologies under which for almost all weights of the subsystem interaction links, the corresponding numerical NRCSs are controllable, which is called structurally controllable. Three types of subsystem interaction fashions are considered: 1) each subsystem is single-input-single-o…
A notion of disturbance propagation stability is defined for dynamical network processes, in terms of decrescence of an input-output energy metric along cutsets away from the disturbance source. A characterization of the disturbance propagation notion is developed for a canonical model for synchronization of linearly-coupled homogeneous subsystems. Specifically, propagation stability is equivalenced with the frequency response of a certain local closed-loop model, which is defined from the subsystem model and local network connections, being sub-unity gain. For the case where the subsystem is …
A robotic system can be viewed as a collection of lower-dimensional systems that are coupled via reaction forces (Lagrange multipliers) enforcing holonomic constraints. Inspired by this viewpoint, this paper presents a novel formulation for nonlinear control systems that are subject to coupling constraints via virtual "coupling" inputs that abstractly play the role of Lagrange multipliers. The main contribution of this paper is a process---mirroring solving for Lagrange multipliers in robotic systems---wherein we isolate subsystems free of coupling constraints that provably encode the full-ord…
