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 are not clear, and we lack a general approach to robust controller analysis and synthesis.
To serve this purpose, we derive robust stability conditions for general systems and formulate the general robust controller synthesis problem. The conditions hinge on the realization-stability lemma, a recent analysis tool that unifies existing controller synthesis methods. Not only can the conditions infer a wide range of existing robust results, but they also lead to easier derivations of new ones. Together, we demonstrate the effectiveness of the conditions and provide a unified approach to robust controller analysis and synthesis.
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…
We consider the problem of how to deploy a controller to a (networked) cyber-physical system (CPS). Controlling a CPS is an involved task, and synthesizing a controller to respect sensing, actuation, and communication constraints is only part of the challenge. In addition to controller synthesis, one should also consider how the controller will be incorporated within the CPS. Put another way, the cyber layer and its interaction with the physical layer need to be taken into account. In this work, we aim to bridge the gap between theoretical controller synthesis and practical CPS deployment. We …
Dynamic Output-Feedback Controller Synthesis for Dissipativity and $H_2$ Performance from Noisy Input-State Data
Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture, University of Zagreb（萨格勒布大学机械与船舶工程学院）；Electrical Engineering Faculty, Eindhoven University of Technology（埃因霍温理工大学电气工程学院）
This manuscript discusses a scalable controller synthesis method for networked systems with a large number of identical subsystems based on the H-infinity control framework. The dynamics of the individual subsystems are described by identical linear time-invariant delay differential equations and the effect of transport and communication delay is explicitly taken into account. The presented method is based on the result that, under a particular assumption on the graph describing the interconnections between the subsystems, the H-infinity norm of the overall system is upper bounded by the robus…
Biological and advanced cyberphysical control systems often have limited, sparse, uncertain, and distributed communication and computing in addition to sensing and actuation. Fortunately, the corresponding plants and performance requirements are also sparse and structured, and this must be exploited to make constrained controller design feasible and tractable. We introduce a new "system level" (SL) approach involving three complementary SL elements. System Level Parameterizations (SLPs) generalize state space and Youla parameterizations of all stabilizing controllers and the responses they ach…
Control of systems with operating condition-dependent dynamics, including control moment gyroscopes, often requires operating condition-dependent controllers to achieve high control performance. The aim of this paper is to develop a frequency response data-driven linear parameter-varying control design approach for single-input single-output systems, which allows improved performance for a control moment gyroscope. A stability theory using closed-loop frequency response function data is developed, which is subsequently used in a synthesis procedure that guarantees local stability and performan…
Permissive Controller Synthesis for Probabilistic Systems
Faculty of Informatics, Masaryk University（马萨里克大学信息学院）；EECS, Queen Mary, University of London（伦敦大学玛丽女王学院电气电子与计算机科学与工程系）；Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford（牛津大学计算机科学系）；School of Computer Science, University of Birmingham（伯明翰大学计算机科学学院）
Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur（印度理工学院坎普尔分校）
We propose a framework for synthesizing a feedback control policy that maximizes the region of attraction (ROA) of a closed-loop nonlinear dynamical system. Our synthesis technique relies on stochastic optimization, which involves computation of an objective function capturing the ROA for a feedback control law. We employ a machine learning technique based on deep neural network to estimate the ROA for a given feedback controller. Overall, our technique is capable of synthesizing a controller co-optimizing traditional control objectives like LQR cost together with ROA. We demonstrate the effic…
In this paper we consider the safety verification and safe controller synthesis problems for nonlinear control systems. The Control Barrier Certificates (CBC) approach is proposed as an extension to the Barrier certificates approach. Our approach can be used to characterize the control invariance of a given set in terms of safety of a general nonlinear control system subject to input constraints. From the point of view of controller design, the proposed method provides an approach to synthesize a safe control law that guarantees that the trajectories of the system starting from a given initial…
Dynamic Output-Feedback Controller Synthesis for Dissipativity and $H_2$ Performance from Noisy Input-Output Data
Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture, University of Zagreb（机械与船舶工程学院，萨格勒布大学）；Electrical Engineering Faculty, Eindhoven University of Technology（电气工程学院，埃因霍温理工大学）
System Level Synthesis (SLS) parametrization facilitates controller synthesis for large, complex, and distributed systems by incorporating system level constraints (SLCs) into a convex SLS problem and mapping its solution to stable controller design. Solving the SLS problem at scale efficiently is challenging, and current attempts take advantage of special system or controller structures to speed up the computation in parallel. However, those methods do not generalize as they rely on the specific system/controller properties. We argue that it is possible to solve general SLS problems more effi…
Although variable-speed three-blade wind turbines are nowadays quite popular, their control remains a challenging task. We propose a new easily implementable model-free control approach with the corresponding intelligent controllers. Several convincing computer simulations, including some fault accommodations, shows that model-free controllers are more efficient and robust than classic proportional-integral controllers.
We have witnessed the emergence of several controller parameterizations and the corresponding synthesis methods, including Youla, system level, input-output, and many other new proposals. Meanwhile, under the same synthesis method, there are multiple realizations to adopt. Different synthesis methods/realizations target different plants/scenarios. Except for some case-by-case studies, we don't currently have a unified framework to understand their relationships. To address the issue, we show that existing controller synthesis methods and realization proposals are all special cases of a simple …
We consider the problem of how to deploy a controller to a (networked) cyber-physical system (CPS). Controlling a CPS is an involved task, and synthesizing a controller to respect sensing, actuation, and communication constraints is only part of the challenge. In addition to controller synthesis, one should also consider how the controller will work in the CPS. Put another way, the cyber layer and its interaction with the physical layer need to be taken into account. In this work, we aim to bridge the gap between theoretical controller synthesis and practical CPS deployment. We adopt the syste…
Receding-Horizon Policy Gradient for Polytopic Controller Synthesis
William E. Boeing Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, University of Washington（华盛顿大学威廉E.波音航空航天系）；Corvinus Institute for Advanced Studies (CIAS)（科尔维努斯高级研究院）；Institute of Data Analytics and Information Systems, Corvinus University of Budapest（布达佩斯科尔维努斯大学数据分析和信息系统研究所）；Hungarian Research Network (HUN-REN)（匈牙利研究网络）
This paper considers the synthesis of optimal safe controllers based on density functions. We present an algorithm for robust constrained optimal control synthesis using the duality relationship between the density function and the value function. The density function follows the Liouville equation and is the dual of the value function, which satisfies Bellman's optimality principle. Thanks to density functions, constraints over the distribution of states, such as safety constraints, can be posed straightforwardly in an optimal control problem. The constrained optimal control problem is then s…
This paper presents necessary and sufficient conditions for deriving a strictly proper dynamic controller which satisfies the negative imaginary output feedback control problem. Our synthesis method divides the output feedback control problem into a state feedback problem and a dual output injection problem. Thus, a controller is formed using the solutions to a pair of dual algebraic Riccati equations. Finally, an illustrative example is offered to show how this method may be applied.
We have witnessed the emergence of several controller parameterizations and the corresponding synthesis methods, including Youla, system level, input-output, and many other new proposals. Meanwhile, under the same synthesis method, there are multiple realizations to adopt. Different synthesis methods/realizations target different plants/scenarios. Also, various robust results are proposed to deal with different perturbed system structures. Except for some case-by-case studies, we don't currently have a unified framework to understand their relationships. To address the issue, we show that exis…
We present a new method for the automated synthesis of digital controllers with formal safety guarantees for systems with nonlinear dynamics, noisy output measurements, and stochastic disturbances. Our method derives digital controllers such that the corresponding closed-loop system, modeled as a sampled-data stochastic control system, satisfies a safety specification with probability above a given threshold. The proposed synthesis method alternates between two steps: generation of a candidate controller pc, and verification of the candidate. pc is found by maximizing a Monte Carlo estimate of…
This paper presents a new data-driven controller synthesis based on the Koopman operator and the extended $\mathcal{H}_2$ norm characterization of discrete-time linear systems. We model dynamical systems as polytope sets which are derived from multiple data-driven linear models obtained by the finite approximation of the Koopman operator and then used to design robust feedback controllers combined with the $\mathcal{H}_2$ norm characterization. The use of the $\mathcal{H}_2$ norm characterization is aimed to deal with the model uncertainty that arises due to the nature of the data-driven setti…
This paper is concerned with a linear fractional representation approach to the synthesis of linear coherent quantum controllers for a given linear quantum plant. The plant and controller represent open quantum harmonic oscillators and are modelled by linear quantum stochastic differential equations. The feedback interconnections between the plant and the controller are assumed to be established through quantum bosonic fields. In this framework, conditions for the stabilization of a given linear quantum plant via linear coherent quantum feedback are addressed using a stable factorization appro…
Output-Feedback Controller Synthesis for Dissipativity and $H_2$ Performance of Autoregressive Systems from Noisy Input-Output Data
Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture, University of Zagreb（机械与船舶工程学院，萨格勒布大学）；Electrical Engineering Faculty, Eindhoven University of Technology（电气工程学院，埃因霍温理工大学）
Relaxed conditions are given for stability of a feedback system consisting of an exponentially stable multi-input multi-output nonlinear plant and an integral controller. Roughly speaking, it is shown that if the composition of the plant equilibrium input-output map and the integral feedback gain is infinitesimally contracting, then the closed-loop system is exponentially stable if the integral gain is sufficiently low. The main result is illustrated with an application arising in frequency control of AC power systems. We demonstrate how the contraction condition can be checked computationally…
This paper considers the robustness analysis and distributed $\mathcal{H}_{\infty}$ (H-infinity) controller synthesis for a platoon of connected vehicles with undirected topologies. We first formulate a unified model to describe the collective behavior of homogeneous platoons with external disturbances using graph theory. By exploiting the spectral decomposition of a symmetric matrix, the collective dynamics of a platoon is equivalently decomposed into a set of subsystems sharing the same size with one single vehicle. Then, we provide an explicit scaling trend of robustness measure $γ$-gain, a…
This paper proposes a data-driven framework to solve time-varying optimization problems associated with unknown linear dynamical systems. Making online control decisions to regulate a dynamical system to the solution of an optimization problem is a central goal in many modern engineering applications. Yet, the available methods critically rely on a precise knowledge of the system dynamics, thus mandating a preliminary system identification phase before a controller can be designed. In this work, we leverage results from behavioral theory to show that the steady-state transfer function of a lin…
