We provide some new necessary and sufficient conditions which guarantee arbitrary pole placement of a particular linear system over the complex numbers. We exhibit a non-trivial real linear system which is not controllable by real static output feedback and discuss a conjecture from algebraic geometry concerning the existence of real linear systems for which all static feedback laws are real.
We study the problem of feedback control for skew-symmetric and skew-Hamiltonian transfer functions using skew-symmetric controllers. This extends work of Helmke, et al., who studied static symmetric feedback control of symmetric and Hamiltonian linear systems. We identify spaces of linear systems with symmetry as natural subvarieties of the moduli space of rational curves in a Grassmannian, give necessary and sufficient conditions for pole placement by static skew-symmetric complex feedback, and use Schubert calculus for the orthogonal Grassmannian to count the number of complex feedback laws…
The paper is concerned with the problem of determining a complete set of invariants for output feedback. Using tools from geometric invariant theory it is shown that there exists a quasi-projective variety whose points parameterize the output feedback orbits in a unique way. If the McMillan degree $n\geq mp$, the product of number of inputs and number of outputs, then it is shown that in the closure of every feedback orbit there is exactly one nondegenerate system.
The pole placement problem asks to find laws to feed the output of a plant governed by a linear system of differential equations back to the input of the plant so that the resulting closed-loop system has a desired set of eigenvalues. Converting this problem into a question of enumerative geometry, efficient numerical homotopy algorithms to solve this problem for general Multi-Input-Multi-Output (MIMO) systems have been proposed recently. While dynamic feedback laws offer a wider range of use, the realization of the output of the numerical homotopies as a machine to control the plant in the ti…
The paper studies the output-feedback synchronization problem for a network of identical, linear time-invariant systems. A criterion to test network synchronization is derived and the class of output-feedback synchronizable systems is introduced and characterized by sufficient and necessary conditions. In particular it is observed that output-feedback stabilizability is sufficient but not necessary for output-feedback synchronizability. In the special case of single-input single-output systems, conditions are derived in the frequency domain. The theory is illustrated with several examples.
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.
Control-affine output systems generically present observability singularities, i.e. inputs that make the system unobservable. This proves to be a difficulty in the context of output feedback stabilization, where this issue is usually discarded by uniform observability assumptions for state feedback stabilizable systems. Focusing on state feedback stabilizable bilinear control systems with linear output, we use a transversality approach to provide perturbations of the stabilizing state feedback law, in order to make our system observable in any time even in the presence of singular inputs.
In the present work, sufficient conditions for global stabilization of nonlinear uncertain systems by means of discrete-delay static output feedback are presented. Illustrating examples show the efficiency of the proposed control strategy.
In this work, we consider the output tracking and disturbance rejection problems of a mono-tubular heat exchanger process and a novel finite-dimensional output feedback regulator is developed. In the proposed output feedback regulator design, measurements available for the regulator do not belong to the set of controlled outputs. In other words, design emphasizes that other than controlled output is used as input signal to the regulator. The proposed output feedback regulator with only plant measurement ym(t) can realize the exosystem state estimation, disturbance rejection and reference signa…
Output feedback stabilization of control systems is a crucial issue in engineering. Most of these systems are not uniformly observable, which proves to be a difficulty to move from state feedback stabilization to dynamic output feedback stabilization. In this paper, we present a methodology to overcome this challenge in the case of dissipative systems by requiring only target detectability. These systems appear in many physical systems and we provide various examples and applications of the result.
In this paper we demonstrate how certain structured feedback gains necessarily emerge as the optimal controller gains in two linear optimal control formulations for multi-agent systems. We consider the cases of linear optimal synchronization and linear optimal centroid stabilization. In the former problem, the considered cost functional integrates squared synchronization error and input, and in the latter, the considered cost functional integrates squared sum of the states and input. Our approach is to view the structures in the feedback gains in terms of a static output feedback with suitable…
The problem of controlling surge and stall in jet engine compressors is of fundamental importance in preventing damage and lengthening the life of these components. In this paper, we use the Moore-Greitzer mathematical model to develop an output feedback controller for these two instabilities (only one of the three states is measurable). This problem is particularly challenging since the system is not completely observable and, hence, none of the output feedback control techniques found in the literature can be applied to recover the performance of a full state feedback controller. However, we…
In this paper, we consider the problem of distributed optimal control of linear dynamical systems with a quadratic cost criterion. We study the case of output feedback control for two interconnected dynamical systems, and show that the linear optimal solution can be obtained from a combination of two uncoupled Riccati equations and two coupled Riccati equations.
In this paper, we investigate the estimator-based output feedback control problem of multi-delay systems. This work is an extension of recently developed operator-value LMI framework for infinite-dimensional time-delay systems. Based on the optimal convex state feedback controller and generalized Luenberger observer synthesis conditions we already have, the estimator-based output feedback controller is designed to contain the estimates of both the present state and history of the state. An output feedback controller synthesis condition is proposed using SOS method, which is expressed in a set …
We investigate input-to-state stability (ISS) of infinite-dimensional collocated control systems subject to saturated feedback. Here, the unsaturated closed loop is dissipative and uniformly globally asymptotically stable. Under an additional assumption on the linear system, we show ISS for the saturated one. We discuss the sharpness of the conditions in light of existing results in the literature.
The present paper addresses the topic of boundary output feedback stabilization of parabolic-type equations, governed by linear differential operators which can be diagonalized by the introduction of adequate weighting functions (by means of the Sturm-Liouville method), and which evolve in bounded spatial domains that are subsets of $\mathbb{R}^d,\ d=1,2,3$. Combining ideas inspired by \cite{lhachemi2022finite} for the boundary output feedback control of 1-D parabolic PDEs and \cite{munteanu2019boundary} for the state feedback control of multi-D parabolic PDEs, we report in this paper an outpu…
We consider the co-design problem of sparse output feedback and row/column-sparse output matrix. A row-sparse (resp. column-sparse) output matrix implies a small number of outputs (resp. sensor measurements). We impose row/column-cardinality constraint on the output matrix and the cardinality constraint on the output feedback gain. The resulting nonconvex, nonsmooth optimal control problem is solved by using the proximal alternating linearization method (PALM). One advantage of PALM is that the proximal operators for sparsity constraints admit closed-form expressions and are easy to implement.…
We derive novel criteria for designing stabilizing dynamic output-feedback controllers for a class of aperiodic impulsive systems subject to a range dwell-time condition. Our synthesis conditions are formulated as clock-dependent linear matrix inequalities (LMIs) which can be solved numerically, e.g., by using matrix sum-of-squares relaxation methods. We show that our results allow us to design dynamic output-feedback controllers for aperiodic sample-data systems and illustrate the proposed approach by means of a numerical example.
This paper studies the problem of pole assignment for symmetric and Hamiltonian transfer functions. A necessary and sufficient condition for pole assignment by complex symmetric output feedback transformations is given. Moreover, in the case where the McMillan degree coincides with the number of parameters appearing in the symmetric feedback transformations, we derive an explicit combinatorial formula for the number of pole assigning symmetric feedback gains. The proof uses intersection theory in projective space as well as a formula for the degree of the complex Lagrangian Grassmann manifold.
We introduce two new tools that can be useful in nonlinear observer and output feedback design. The first one is a simple extension of the notion of homogeneous approximation to make it valid both at the origin and at infinity (homogeneity in the bi-limit). Exploiting this extension, we give several results concerning stability and robustness for a homogeneous in the bi-limit vector field. The second tool is a new recursive observer design procedure for a chain of integrator. Combining these two tools, we propose a new global asymptotic stabilization result by output feedback for feedback and …
In this paper, we study the event-triggered global robust practical output regulation problem for a class of nonlinear systems in output feedback form with any relative degree. Our approach consists of the following three steps. First, we design an internal model and an observer to form the so-called extended augmented system. Second, we convert the original problem into the event-triggered global robust practical stabilization problem of the extended augmented system. Third, we design an output-based event-triggered control law and a Zeno-free output-based event-triggered mechanism to solve t…
In this paper, we study the irregular output feedback linear quadratic (LQ) control problem, which is a continuous work of previous works for irregular LQ control [33] where the state is assumed to be exactly known priori. Different from the classic output feedback LQ control problem, the cost function must be modified to guarantee the solvability. In the framework of the modified cost function, it is shown that the separation principle holds and the explicitly optimal controller is given in the feedback form of the Kalman filtering. In particular, the feedback gain is calculated by two Riccat…
The goal of the paper is two-fold. The first of which is to derive an explicit formula to compute the generating series of a closed-loop system when a plant, given in a Chen-Fliess series description is in multiplicative output feedback connection with another system given in Chen-Fliess series description. Further, the objective extends in showing that the multiplicative dynamic output feedback connection has a natural interpretation as a transformation group acting on the plant. The second of the two-part goal of this paper is same as the first part albeit when the Chen-Fliess series in the …
Recently, [2] proved that the closed-loop system resulting from the output proportional feedback stabilization of a class of delayed neural fields is input-to-state stable (ISS) for sufficiently high gain, subject to the existence of an equilibrium point for the closed-loop system. In the present paper, we show that a sufficient condition for such an equilibrium to exist is that the activation functions are bounded.
The synthesis problem of static output feedback controllers within the anistropic-norm setup is revisited. A tractable synthesis approach involving iterations over a convex optimization problem is suggested, similarly to existing results for the Hinfinity-norm minimization case. The results are formulated by a couple of Linear Matrix Inequalities coupled via a bilinear equality, revealing, as in the Hinfinity case, the duality between the control-type and filtering type LMIs and allowing a tractable iterative method to cope with practical static output feedback synthesis problems. The resultin…
We consider the problem of designing a state feedback control law to achieve nonovershooting tracking for feedback linearisable multiple-input multiple-output nonlinear systems. The reference signal is assumed to be obtained from a linear exosystem. The design method adopts known methods for the nonovershooting tracking of linear systems and extends them to the output regulation of feedback linearisable nonlinear systems. The method accommodates arbitrary initial conditions and offers design choice of the tracking convergence speed.
We address the problem of dynamic output feedback stabilization at an unobservable target point. The challenge lies in according the antagonistic nature of the objective and the properties of the system: the system tends to be less observable as it approaches the target. We illustrate two main ideas: well chosen perturbations of a state feedback law can yield new observability properties of the closed-loop system, and embedding systems into bilinear systems admitting observers with dissipative error systems allows to mitigate the observability issues. We apply them on a case of systems with li…
We study the output feedback exponential stabilization of a one-dimensional unstable wave equation, where the boundary input, given by the Neumann trace at one end of the domain, is the sum of the control input and the total disturbance. The latter is composed of a nonlinear uncertain feedback term and an external bounded disturbance. Using the two boundary displacements as output signals, we design a disturbance estimator that does not use high gain. It is shown that the disturbance estimator can estimate the total disturbance in the sense that the estimation error signal is in $L^2[0,\infty)…
We propose to explore switching methods in order to recover some properties of Kalmanlike observers for output feedback stabilization of state-affine systems that may present observability singularities. The self-tuning gain matrix in Kalman-like observers tend to be singular in the case of non-uniformly observable systems. We show in the case of state-affine systems with observable target that it can be prevented by dynamically monitoring observability of the system, and switching the control when it becomes critical.
We here specialize the well known Positive Real Lemma (also known as the Kalman-Yakubovich-Popov Lemma) to complex matrix-valued rational functions, (i) generalized positive even and (ii) odd. On the way we characterize the (non) minimality of realization of arbitrary systems through (i) the corresponding state matrix and (ii) moving the poles by applying static output feedback. We then explore the application of static output feedback to both generalized positive even and to odd functions.
We propose a formulation for approximate constrained nonlinear output-feedback stochastic model predictive control. Starting from the ideal but intractable stochastic optimal control problem (OCP), which involves the optimization over output-dependent policies, we use linearization with respect to the uncertainty to derive a tractable approximation which includes knowledge of the output model. This allows us to compute the expected value for the outer functions of the OCP exactly. Crucially, the dual control effect is preserved by this approximation. In consequence, the resulting controller is…
We consider the problem of optimal sparse output feedback controller synthesis for continuous linear time invariant systems when the feedback gain is static and subject to specified structural constraints. Introducing an additional term penalizing the number of non-zero entries of the feedback gain into the optimization cost function, we show that this inherently non-convex problem can be equivalently cast as a rank constrained optimization, hence, it is an NP-hard problem. We further exploit our rank constrained approach to define a structured output feedback control feasibility test with glo…
This paper introduces a new approach for output feedback stabilization of SISO systems which, unlike most of the techniques found in the literature, does not use high-gain observers and control input saturation to achieve separation between the state feedback and observer designs. Rather, we show that by using nonlinear observers, together with a projection algorithm, the same kind of separation principle is achieved for a larger class of systems, namely stabilizable and incompletely observable plants. Furthermore, this new approach avoids using knowledge of the inverse of the observability ma…
In this paper, we build up an output feedback law to stabilize a sampled-data controlled heat equation (with a potential) in a bounded domain $Ω$. The feedback law abides the following rules: First, we divide equally the time interval $[0,+\infty)$ into infinitely many disjoint time periods, and divide each time period into three disjoint subintervals. Second, for each time period, we observe a solution over an open subset of $Ω$ in the first subinterval, take sample from outputs at one time point of the first subinterval, add a time-invariant output feedback control over another open subset o…
This paper develops systematically the output feedback exponential stabilization for a one-dimensional unstable/anti-stable wave equation where the control boundary suffers from both internal nonlinear uncertainty and external disturbance. Using only two displacement signals, we propose a disturbance estimator that not only can estimate successfully the disturbance in the sense that the error is in $L^2(0,\infty)$ but also is free high-gain. With the estimated disturbance, we design a state observer that is exponentially convergent to the state of original system. An observer-based output feed…
We consider the static output feedback control for Linear Quadratic Regulator problems with structured constraints under the assumption that system parameters are unknown. To solve the problem in the model free setting, we propose the policy gradient algorithm based on the gradient projection method and show its global convergence to $\varepsilon$-stationary points. In addition, we introduce a variance reduction technique and show both theoretically and numerically that it significantly reduces the variance in the gradient estimation. We also show in the numerical experiments that the model fr…
We present designs for exponential stabilization of an ODE-heat PDE-ODE coupled system where the control actuation only acts in one ODE. The combination of PDE backstepping and ODE backstepping is employed in a state-feedback control law and in an observer that estimates PDE and two ODE states only using one PDE boundary measurement. Based on the state-feedback control law and the observer, the output-feedback control law is then proposed. The exponential stability of the closed-loop system and the boundedness and exponential convergence of the control law are proved via Lyapunov analysis. Fin…
We study output reference tracking of systems with high relative degree via output feedback only; this is, tracking where the output derivatives are unknown. To this end, we prove that the conjunction of the funnel pre-compensator with a minimum phase system of arbitrary relative degree yields a system of the same relative degree which is minimum phase as well. The error between the original system's output and the pre-compensator's output evolves within a prescribed performance funnel; and moreover, the derivatives of the funnel pre-compensator's output are known explicitly. Therefore, output…
System Level Synthesis (SLS) allows us to construct internally stabilizing controllers for large-scale systems. However, solving large-scale SLS problems is computationally expensive and the state-of-the-art methods consider only state feedback; output feedback poses additional challenges because the constraints are no longer uniquely row or column separable. We exploit the structure of the output-feedback SLS problem by vectorizing the multi-sided matrix multiplications in the SLS optimization constraints, which allows us to reformulate it as a discrete-time control problem and solve using tw…
Distributed control problems under some specific information constraints can be formulated as (possibly infinite dimensional) convex optimization problems. The underlying motivation of this work is to develop an understanding of the optimal decision making architecture for such problems. In this paper, we particularly focus on the N-player triangular LQG problems and show that the optimal output feedback controllers have attractive state space realizations. The optimal controller can be synthesized using a set of stabilizing solutions to 2N linearly coupled algebraic Riccati equations, which t…
We consider the problem of steering, via output feedback, the state distribution of a discrete-time, linear stochastic system from an initial Gaussian distribution to a terminal Gaussian distribution with prescribed mean and maximum covariance, subject to probabilistic path constraints on the state. The filtered state is obtained via a Kalman filter, and the problem is formulated as a deterministic convex program in terms of the distribution of the filtered state. We observe that, in the presence of constraints on the state covariance, and in contrast to classical Linear Quadratic Gaussian (LQ…
The dual iteration was introduced in a conference paper in 1997 by Iwasaki as an iterative and heuristic procedure for the challenging and non-convex design of static output-feedback controllers. We recall in detail its essential ingredients and go beyond the work of Iwasaki by demonstrating that the framework of linear fractional representations allows for a seamless extension of the dual iteration to output-feedback designs of practical relevance, such as the design of robust or robust gain-scheduled controllers. In the paper of Iwasaki, the dual iteration is solely based on, and motivated b…
We propose a deep unfolding-based approach for stabilization of time-delay linear systems. Deep unfolding is an emerging framework for design and improvement of iterative algorithms and attracting significant attentions in signal processing. In this paper, we propose an algorithm to design a static output feedback gain for stabilizing time-delay linear systems via deep unfolding. Within the algorithm, the learning part is driven by NeuralODE developed in the community of machine learning, while the gain verification is performed with linear matrix inequalities developed in the systems and cont…
This paper addresses the problem of positive consensus of directed multi-agent systems with observer-type output-feedback protocols. More specifically, directed graph is used to model the communication topology of the multi-agent system and linear matrix inequalities (LMIs) are used in the consensus analysis in this paper. Using positive systems theory and graph theory, a convex programming algorithm is developed to design appropriate protocols such that the multi-agent system is able to reach consensus with its state trajectory always remaining in the non-negative orthant. Finally, numerical …
A new formulation of Stochastic Model Predictive Output Feedback Control is presented and analyzed as a translation of Stochastic Optimal Output Feedback Control into a receding horizon setting. This requires lifting the design into a framework involving propagation of the conditional state density, the information state, via the Bayesian Filter and solution of the Stochastic Dynamic Programming Equation for an optimal feedback policy, both stages of which are computationally challenging in the general, nonlinear setup. The upside is that the clearance of three bottleneck aspects of Model Pred…
This paper deals with suboptimal distributed H2 control by dynamic output feedback for homogeneous linear multi-agent systems. Given a linear multi-agent system, together with an associated H2 cost functional, the objective is to design dynamic output feedback protocols that guarantee the associated cost to be smaller than an a priori given upper bound while synchronizing the controlled network. A design method is provided to compute such protocols. The computation of the two local gains in these protocols involves two Riccati inequalities, each of dimension equal to the dimension of the state…
In this paper, we study the output feedback stabilization for a scalar conservation law with a nonlocal velocity, that models a highly re-entrant manufacturing system as encountered in semi-conductor production. By spectral analysis, we obtain a complete result on the exponential stabilization for the linearized control system. Moreover, by using a Lyapunov function approach, we also prove the exponential stabilization results for the nonlinear control system in certain cases.
Given two nonlinear input-output systems written in terms of Chen-Fliess functional expansions, it is known that the feedback interconnected system is always well defined and in the same class. An explicit formula for the generating series of a single-input, single-output closed-loop system was provided by the first two authors in earlier work via Hopf algebra methods. This paper is a sequel. It has four main innovations. First, the full multivariable extension of the theory is presented. Next, a major simplification of the basic set up is introduced using a new type of grading that has recent…
This paper investigates the design of decentralized output-feedback controllers for a class of a large scale switched nonlinear systems under arbitrary switching laws. A global large scale switched system can be split into a set of smaller interconnected switched Takagi Sugeno fuzzy subsystems. Then, in order to stabilize the overall closed-loop system, a set of switched non-PDC static output controllers is employed. The latter is designed based on Linear Matrix Inequality (LMI) conditions obtained from a multiple switched non quadratic-like Lyapunov candidate function. The controllers propose…