Upcoming volume is Volume 45, Number 1.


It will include the following papers:

Decentralized Structural Controller Design for Large-Scale Discrete-Event Systems Modelled by Petri Nets

Aydin Aybar and Altug Iftar
Abstract: A decentralized structural controller design approach for discrete-event systems modelled by Petri nets is presented. The approach makes use of overlapping decompositions. The given Petri net model is first overlappingly decomposed into a number of Petri subnets and is expanded to obtain disjoint Petri subnets. A structural controller is then designed for each Petri subnet to avoid deadlock. The obtained controllers are finally applied to the original Petri net. The proposed approach significantly reduces the computational burden to design the controller. Furthermore, the controller obtained is decentralized and, hence, is easier to implement.
Pages: 3-14

Non-Fragile Controllers for a Class of Time-Delay Nonlinear Systems

Lubomír Bakule and Manuel de la Sen
Abstract: The paper deals with the synthesis of a non-fragile state controller with reduced design complexity for a class of continuous-time nonlinear delayed symmetric composite systems. Additive controller gain perturbations are considered. Both subsystems and interconnections include time-delays. A low-order control design system is first constructed. Then, stabilizing controllers with norm bounded gain uncertainties are designed for the control design system using linear matrix inequalities (LMIs) for both delay-independent and delay-dependent stability approaches. The main result shows that when such a non-fragile low-order controllers are implemented into each local controller of the decentralized controller for the global system, the global closed-loop systems are globally asymptotically stable.
Pages: 15-32

Decentralized Output Regulation of Large Scale Nonlinear Systems with Delay

Zhengtao Ding
Abstract: This paper deals with output regulation of a class of large-scale nonlinear systems with delays. Each of the subsystems is in the output feedback form, with nonlinear functions of the subsystem output and the outputs of other subsystems. The system outputs are subject to unknown constant delays. Both the system dynamics and the measurements are subject to unknown disturbances generated from unknown linear exosystems. Decentralized control design approach is adopted to design local controllers using measurements or regulated errors in each subsystems. It is shown in this paper that delays in the outputs of subsystems do not affect the existences of desired feedforward control input, and the invariant manifolds and the desired feedforward inputs always exist if the nonlinear functions are polynomials. Through a special parameterization of an augmented exosystem, an internal model can be designed for each subsystem, without the involvements of the uncertain parameters. The uncertain parameters affected by the uncertainty of the exosystem are estimated using adaptive control laws, and adaptive coefficients in the control inputs are used to suppress other uncertainties. The proposed decentralized adaptive control strategy ensures the global stability of the entire system, and the convergence to zero of the regulated errors. An example is included to demonstrate the proposed control strategy.
Pages: 33-48

Robust Decentralized H2 Control of Multi-Channel Descriptor Systems with Norm-Bounded Parametric Uncertainties

Weihua Gui, Ning Chen and Guisheng Zhai
Abstract: This paper considers a robust decentralized H_2 control problem for multi-channel descriptor systems. The uncertainties are assumed to be time-invariant, norm-bounded, and exist in both the system and control input matrices. Our interest is focused on dynamic output feedback. A necessary and sufficient condition for an uncertain multi-channel descriptor system to be robustly stabilizable with a specified H_2 norm is derived in terms of a strict nonlinear matrix inequality (NMI), that is, an NMI with no equality constraint. A two-stage homotopy method is proposed to solve the NMI iteratively. First, a decentralized controller for the nominal descriptor system is computed by imposing block-diagonal constraints on the coefficient matrices of the controller gradually. Then, the decentralized controller is modified, again gradually, to cope with the uncertainties. On each stage, groups of variables are fixed alternately at the iterations to reduce the NMI to linear matrix inequalities (LMIs). An example is given to show the efficiency of this method.
Pages: 49-62

A New Nyquist-based Technique for Tuning Robust Decentralized Controllers

Alena Kozáková, VojtechVeselý and Jakub Osuský
Abstract: An original Nyquist-based frequency domain robust decentralized controller (DC) design technique for robust stability and guaranteed nominal performance is proposed, applicable for continuous-time uncertain systems described by a set of transfer function matrices. To provide nominal performance, interactions are included in individual design using one selected characteristic locus of the interaction matrix, used to reshape frequency responses of decoupled subsystems; such modified subsystems are termed ``equivalent subsystems". Local controllers of equivalent subsystems independently tuned for stability and specified feasible performance constitute the decentralized controller guaranteeing specified performance of the full system. To guarantee robust stability, the $M-\Delta$ stability conditions are derived. Unlike standard robust approaches, the proposed technique considers full nominal model, thus reducing conservativeness of resulting robust stability conditions. The developed frequency domain design procedure is graphical, interactive and insightful. A case study providing a step-by-step robust DC design for the Quadruple Tank Process \cite{johan} is included.
Pages: 63-83
 

Flocking Control of Multi-Agent Systems with Application to Nonholonomic Multi-Robots

Qin Li and Zhong-Ping Jiang
Abstract: In this paper, we revisit the artificial potential based approach in the flocking control for multi-agent systems, where our main concerns are migration and trajectory tracking problems. The static destination or, more generally, the moving reference point is modeled by a virtual leader, whose information is utilized by some agents, called active agents (AA), for the controller design. We study a decentralized flocking controller for the case where the set of AAs is fixed. Some results on the velocity consensus, collision avoidance, group configuration and robustness are proposed. Further, we apply the proposed controller to the observer based flocking control of a team of nonholonomic mobile robots.
Pages: 84-100

Robust H^{\infty} Control of an Uncertain System via a Stable Decentralized Output Feedback Controller

Ian R. Petersen
Abstract: This paper presents a procedure for constructing a stable decentralized output feedback controller for a class of uncertain systems in which the uncertainty is described by Integral Quadratic Constraints. The controller is constructed to solve a problem of robust $H^\infty$ control. The proposed procedure involves solving a set of algebraic Riccati equations of the $H^\infty$ control type which are dependent on a number of scaling parameters. By treating the off-diagonal elements of the controller transfer function matrix as uncertainties, a decentralized controller is obtained by taking the block-diagonal part of a non-decentralized stable output feedback controller which solves the robust $H^\infty$ control problem. This approach to decentralized controller design enables the controller to exploit the coupling between the subsystems of the plant.
Pages: 101-120

Decentralized Robust Tracking Control of Uncertain Large Scale Systems with Multiple Delays in the Interconnections

Hansheng Wu
Abstract: The problem of the decentralized robust tracking and model following is considered for a class of uncertain large scale systems including time-varying delays in the interconnections. On the basis of the Razumikhin-type theorem and the Lyapunov stability theory, a class of decentralized memoryless local state feedback controllers is proposed for robust tracking of dynamical signals. It is shown that by employing the proposed decentralized robust tracking controllers, one can guarantee that the tracking error between each time-delay subsystem and the corresponding local reference model without time-delay decreases uniformly asymptotically to zero. In this paper, it is assumed that the time-varying delays are any continuous and bounded nonnegative functions, and the proposed decentralized robust tracking controllers are independent of the delays. Therefore, the results obtained in the paper are applicable to large scale systems without exact knowledge of the delays, i.e. large systems with perturbed delays.
Pages: 121-136

A Study on Decentralized \H\infty Feedback Control Systems with Local Quantizers

Guisheng Zhai, Ning Chen and Weihua Gui
Abstract: In this paper, we study decentralized $\H_{\infty}$ feedback control systems with quantized signals in local input-output (control) channels. We first assume that a decentralized output feedback controller has been designed for a multi-channel continuous-time system so that the closed-loop system is Hurwitz stable and a desired $\H_{\infty}$ disturbance attenuation level is achieved. However, since the local measurement outputs are quantized by a gerenal quantizer before they are passed to the controller, the system's performance is not guaranteed. For this purpose, we propose a local-output-dependent strategy for updating the quantizers' parameters, so that the closed-loop system is asymptotically stable and achieves the same $\H_{\infty}$ disturbance attenuation level. We also extend the discussion and the result to the case of multi-channel discrete-time $\H_{\infty}$ feedback control systems.
Pages: 137-150

DECENTRALIZED CONTROL AND SYNCHRONIZATION OF TIME-VARYING COMPLEX DYNAMICAL NETWORK

Wei-Song Zhong, Jovan D. Stefanovski, Georgi M. Dimirovski and Jun Zhao
Abstract: A new class of controlled time-varying complex dynamical networks with similarity is investigated and a decentralized holographic-structure controller is designed to stabilize the network asymptotically at its equilibrium states. The control design is based on the similarity assumption for isolated node dynamics and the topological structure of the overall network. Network synchronization problems, both locally and globally, are considered on the ground of decentralized control approach. Each sub-controller makes use of the information on the corresponding node's dynamics and the resulting overall controller is composed of those sub-controllers. The overall controller can be obtained by means of a combination of typical control designs and appropriate parametric tuning for each isolated node. Several numerical simulation examples are given to illustrate the feasibility and the efficiency of the proposed control design.
Pages: 151-167