We study linear quadratic Gaussian (LQG) control design for linear port-Hamiltonian systems. To this end, we exploit the freedom in choosing the weighting matrices and propose a specific choice which leads to an LQG controller which is port-Hamiltonian and, thus, in particular stable and passive. Furthermore, we construct a reduced-order controller via balancing and subsequent truncation. This approach is closely related to classical LQG balanced truncation and shares a similar a priori error bound with respect to the gap metric. By exploiting the non-uniqueness of the Hamiltonian, we are able to determine an optimal pH representation of the full-order system in the sense that the error bound is minimized. In addition, we discuss consequences for pH-preserving balanced truncation model reduction which results in two different classical H-infinity-error bounds. Finally, we illustrate the theoretical findings by means of two numerical examples.
In this paper, we aim at developing computationally tractable methods for nonlinear model/controller reduction. Recently, model reduction by generalized differential (GD) balancing has been proposed for nonlinear systems with constant input-vector fields and linear output functions. First, we study incremental properties in the GD balancing framework. Next, based on these analyses, we provide GD LQG balancing and GD $H_\infty$-balancing as controller reduction methods for nonlinear systems by focusing on linear feedback and observer gains. Especially for GD $H_\infty$-balancing, we clarify whe…
In this work, we investigate grid-forming (GFM) control for dc/ac power converters in emerging power systems that contain ac and dc networks, renewable generation, and conventional generation. We propose a novel power-balancing GFM control strategy that simultaneously forms the converter ac and dc voltage (i.e., dual-port GFM), unifies standard grid-following (GFL) and GFM functions, and is backwards compatible with conventional machine-based generation. Notably, in contrast to state-of-the-art control architectures that use a mix of grid-forming and grid-following control, dual-port GFM contr…
Legged locomotion has received increasing attention from the robotics community. In this respect, contact stability plays a critical role in ensuring that robots maintain balance, and it is a key element for balancing and walking controllers. The Center of Pressure is a contact stability criterion that defines a point that must be kept strictly inside the support polygon in order to ensure postural stability. In this paper, we introduce the concept of the sensitivity of the static center of pressure: roughly speaking, the rate of change of the center of pressure with respect to the system equi…
Mobility-on-Demand (MoD) systems require load balancing to maintain consistent service across regions with uneven demand subject to time-varying traffic conditions. The load-balancing objective is to jointly minimize the fraction of lost customer requests due to vehicle unavailability and the fraction of time when vehicles drive empty during load balancing operations. In order to bypass the intractability of a globally optimal solution to this stochastic dynamic optimization problem, we propose a parametric threshold-based control driven by the known relative abundance of vehicles available in…
This paper studies the problem of frequency regulation in power grids, while maximizing the social welfare. Two price-based controllers are proposed; the first one an internal-model-based controller and the second one based on a continuous gradient method for optimization. Both controllers can be implemented in a fully distributed fashion, with freedom in choosing a controller communication network. As a result, two real-time dynamic pricing models described by port- Hamiltonian systems are obtained. By coupling with the port- Hamiltonian description of the physical network we obtain a closed-…
We will give general sufficient conditions under which a controller achieves robust regulation for a boundary control and observation system. Utilizing these conditions we construct a minimal order robust controller for an arbitrary order impedance passive linear port-Hamiltonian system. The theoretical results are illustrated with a numerical example where we implement a controller for a one-dimensional Euler-Bernoulli beam with boundary controls and boundary observations.
An in-domain finite dimensional controller for a class of distributed parameter systems on a one-dimensional spatial domain formulated under the port-Hamiltonian framework is presented. Based on [25] where positive feedback and a late lumping approach are used, we extend the Control by Interconnection method and propose a new energy shaping methodology with an early lumping approach on the distributed spatial domain of the system. Our two main control objectives are to stabilize the closed loop system, as well as to improve the closed loop dynamic performances. With the early lumping approach,…
In this paper, we are concerned with the stabilization of linear port-Hamiltonian systems of arbitrary order $N \in \mathbb{N}$ on a bounded $1$-dimensional spatial domain $(a,b)$. In order to achieve stabilization, we couple the system to a dynamic boundary controller, that is, a controller that acts on the system only via the boundary points $a,b$ of the spatial domain. We use a nonlinear controller in order to capture the nonlinear behavior that realistic actuators often exhibit and, moreover, we allow the output of the controller to be corrupted by actuator disturbances before it is fed ba…
In this paper, we treat extended balancing for continuous-time linear time-invariant systems, and we address the problem of structure-preserving model reduction of the subclass of port-Hamiltonian systems. We establish sufficient conditions to ensure that the reduced-order model preserves a port-Hamiltonian structure. Moreover, we show that the use of extended Gramians can be exploited to get a small error bound and, possibly, to preserve a physical interpretation for the reduced-order model.
Envisioned applications for humanoid robots call for the design of balancing and walking controllers. While promising results have been recently achieved, robust and reliable controllers are still a challenge for the control community dealing with humanoid robotics. Momentum-based strategies have proven their effectiveness for controlling humanoids balancing, but the stability analysis of these controllers is still missing. The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, we numerically show that the application of state-of-the-art momentum-based control strategies may lead to unstable zero d…
We study $H_\infty$ control design for linear time-invariant port-Hamiltonian systems. By a modification of the two central algebraic Riccati equations, we ensure that the resulting controller will be port-Hamiltonian. Using these modified equations, we proceed to show that a corresponding balanced truncation approach preserves port-Hamiltonian structure. We illustrate the theoretical findings using numerical examples and observe that the chosen representation of the port-Hamiltonian system can have an influence on the approximation qualities of the reduced order model.
In this work we present a constructive method to design a family of virtual contraction based controllers that solve the standard trajectory tracking problem of flexible-joint robots (FJRs) in the port-Hamiltonian (pH) framework. The proposed design method, called virtual contraction based control (v-CBC), combines the concepts of virtual control systems and contraction analysis. It is shown that under potential energy matching conditions, the closed-loop virtual system is contractive and exponential convergence to a predefined trajectory is guaranteed. Moreover, the closed-loop virtual system…
We present a new fixed-order H-infinity controller design method for potentially large-scale port-Hamiltonian (pH) plants. Our method computes controllers that are also pH (and thus passive) such that the resulting closed-loop systems is again passive, which ensures closed-loop stability simply from the structure of the plant and controller matrices. In this way, we can avoid computationally expensive eigenvalue computations that would otherwise be necessary. In combination with a sample-based objective function which allows us to avoid multiple evaluations of the H-infinity norm (which is typ…
We address the problem of simultaneously learning and control in an online receding horizon control setting. We consider the control of an unknown linear dynamical system with general cost functions and affine constraints on the control input. Our goal is to develop an online learning algorithm that minimizes the dynamic regret, which is defined as the difference between the cumulative cost incurred by the algorithm and that of the best policy with full knowledge of the system, cost functions and state and that satisfies the control input constraints. We propose a novel approach to explore in …
Boundary feedback stabilisation of linear port-Hamiltonian systems on an interval is considered. Generation and stability results already known for linear feedback are extended to nonlinear dissipative feedback, both to static feedback control and dynamic control via an (exponentially stabilising) nonlinear controller. A design method for nonlinear controllers of linear port-Hamiltonian systems is introduced. As a special case the Euler-Bernoulli beam is considered.
Feedback controllers for port-Hamiltonian systems reveal an intrinsic inverse optimality property since each passivating state feedback controller is optimal with respect to some specific performance index. Due to the nonlinear port-Hamiltonian system structure, however, explicit (forward) methods for optimal control of port-Hamiltonian systems require the generally intractable analytical solution of the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation. Adaptive dynamic programming methods provide a means to circumvent this issue. However, the few existing approaches for port-Hamiltonian systems hinge on very…
It is a universal phenomenon that the state and input of the continuous stirred tank reactor (CSTR) systems are both disturbed. This paper proposes a (state, input)-disturbed port-Hamiltonian framework that can be used to model and further designs a stochastic passivity based controller to asymptotically stabilize in probability the (state, input)-disturbed CSTR (sidCSTR) systems. The opposite entropy function and the availability function are selected as the Hamiltonian for the model and control purposes, respectively. Furthermore, the proposed (state, input)-disturbed port-Hamiltonian model …
In this paper, we consider nonlinear PDEs in a port-Hamiltonian setting based on an underlying jet-bundle structure. We restrict ourselves to systems with 1-dimensional spatial domain and 2nd-order Hamiltonian including certain dissipation models that can be incorporated in the port- Hamiltonian framework by means of appropriate differential operators. For this system class, energy-based control by means of Casimir functionals as well as energy balancing is analysed and demonstrated using a nonlinear Euler-Bernoulli beam.
In this contribution we present an intrinsic description of time-variant Port Hamiltonian systems as they appear in modeling and control theory. This formulation is based on the splitting of the state bundle and the use of appropriate covariant derivatives, which guarantees that the structure of the equations is invariant with respect to time-variant coordinate transformations. In particular, we will interpret our covariant system representation in the context of control theoretic problems. Typical examples are time-variant error systems related to trajectory tracking problems which allow for …
In this paper, we consider infinite-dimensional port-Hamiltonian systems with in-domain actuation by means of an approach based on Stokes-Dirac structures as well as in a framework that exploits an underlying jet-bundle structure. In both frameworks, a dynamic controller based on the energy-Casimir method is derived in order to stabilise certain equilibrias. Moreover, we propose distributed-parameter observers deduced by exploiting damping injection for the observer error. Finally, we compare the approaches by means of an in-domain actuated vibrating string and show the equivalence of the cont…
