Optimal sampled-data control of a class of piecewise affine systems

In this paper, a Lyapunov-based method is provided to study the local asymptotic stability of planar piecewise affine systems with continuous vector fields. For such systems, the state space is supposed to be partitioned into several bounded convex polytopes. A piecewise affine function, not necessarily continuous on the boundaries of the polytopic partitions, is proposed as a candidate Lyapunov function. Then, sufficient conditions for the local asymptotic stability of the system, including a monotonicity condition at switching instants, are formulated as a linear programming problem. In addition, when the problem does not have a feasible solution based on the original partitions of the system, a new partition refinement algorithm is presented. In this way, more flexibility can be provided in searching for the Lyapunov function. Owing to relaxation of the continuity condition imposed on the system boundaries, the proposed method reaches to less conservative results, compared with the previous methods based on continuous piecewise affine Lyapunov functions. Simulation results illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

The main contribution of this paper is to present the systematic and low-complexity translation techniques between a class of hybrid systems referred to as automaton-based DHA and piecewise affine (PWA) systems. As an starting point the general modeling framework of the automaton-based DHA is represented which models the controlled and uncontrolled switching phenomena between linear continuous dynamics including discrete and continuous states, inputs and outputs. The basic theoretical definitions on the state trajectories of the proposed DHA with forward and backward evolutions which yield forward and backward piecewise affine (FPWA and BPWA) systems are given. Next, the well-posedness and equivalency properties are proposed and the sufficient conditions under which the well-posedness property is achieved with the automaton-based DHA and PWA systems are given. It is shown that the graphical structure of the proposed automaton-based DHA makes it possible to obtain analytically the equivalent PWA system with a polynomial complexity in contrast to the existing numerical translation techniques via decomposed structure of the DHA with an exponential complexity. Examples are presented to confirm the effectiveness of the proposed translation techniques.

Piecewise affine (PWA) systems are autonomous systems with discontinuous vector fields which are affine ordinary differential equations at the points of continuity. These systems have applications to many fields of engineering, including systems biology and traffic engineering. We define what it means for a PWA system to be monotone, and we provide a set of sufficient conditions for monotonicity of PWA systems with hyperrectangular invariants. Such sufficient conditions are useful for understanding the dynamics of such PWA systems and for designing controllers for qualitative, reference tracking. We apply these results towards the drug-discovery problem for the cancer-related p53 pathway.

We prove, in a constructive way, the equivalence between hybrid and piecewise affine systems. By focusing our investigation on the latter class, we show through counter-examples that observability and controllability properties cannot be easily deduced from those of the component linear subsystems. Instead, we propose practical numerical tests based on mixed-integer linear programming.

Sequences of Discrete Abstractions for Piecewise Affine Systems

This article is concerned with the adaptive fault‐tolerant tracking control (FTTC) issue with performance constraint for piecewise affine (PWA) systems subject to actuator failures. The mode switching of PWA systems bring out a challenge to guarantee the predefined performance. To conquer this obstacle, a novel adaptive FTTC strategy with time‐varying performance guarantees for PWA systems is devised. First, a piecewise generalized restricted potential function for PWA systems is introduced. Then, by using tracking error, the performance function and a set of matrices, an adaptive FTTC scheme is developed. With the aid of a time‐varying positive definite Lyapunov function, it is proved that the tracking error can be constrained within predefined performance bounds by the developed method. Finally, the simulation results further illustrate the proposed theoretical findings.

Control of gene regulatory networks is one of the fundamental topics in systems biology. In the last decade, control theory of Boolean networks (BNs), which is well known as a model of gene regulatory networks, has been widely studied. In this review paper, our previously proposed methods on optimal control of probabilistic Boolean networks (PBNs) are introduced. First, the outline of PBNs is explained. Next, an optimal control method using polynomial optimization is explained. The finite-time optimal control problem is reduced to a polynomial optimization problem. Furthermore, another finite-time optimal control problem, which can be reduced to an integer programming problem, is also explained.

This paper addresses the design of a fault detection and reconfigurable control structure for bimodal piecewise affine (PWA) systems. The PWA bimodal system will be designed to verify input-to-state stability (ISS) in closed loop. The proposed methodology is divided into two parts. First, a Luenberger-based observer structure is proposed to solve the fault detection and identification (FDI) problem for bimodal PWA systems. The unknown value of the fault parameter is estimated by an observer equation, which is derived using a Lyapunov-based methodology. Then, the ISS property is proved for the observer. Second, a fault-tolerant state feedback controller is synthesized for the PWA model. The controller is designed to deal with partial loss of control authority identified by the observer. The ISS property is also proved for the controller. Finally, the ISS property for the interconnection of the controller and the observer-based fault identification mechanism is studied. The design procedure is formulated as a set of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs), which can be solved efficiently using available software packages.

A duality-based convex optimization approach to L 2 -gain control of piecewise affine slab differential inclusions

This paper presents a novel observer-based controller design method for discrete-time piecewise affine (PWA) systems. The basic idea is as follows: at first, a piecewise linear (without affine terms) state feedback controller and a PWA observer are designed separately, and then it is proved that the output feedback controller constructed by the resulting observer and state feedback controller gains can guarantee the stability of the closed-loop system. During the controller design, the piecewise-quadratic Lyapunov function technique is used. Moreover, the region information is taken into account to treat the affine terms, so the controller gains can be obtained by solving a set of linear matrix inequalities, which are numerically feasible with commercially available software. Three simulation examples are given finally to verify the proposed theoretical results. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley and Sons Asia Pte Ltd and Chinese Automatic Control Society

Formal analysis of piecewise affine systems through formula-guided refinement

A methodology for the construction of an explicit nonlinear control law approximating nonlinear constrained finite-time optimal control (CFTOC) is presented. This is achieved by means of a modelling technique that permits the use of an approximate mapping of a general nonlinear system. A set of piecewise affine (PWA) systems is created such that the information of the nonlinear structure of the original system is maintained. The key advantages of this methodology are two-fold: Firstly, having an explicit solution of the CFTOC problem permits the direct implementation of traditionally computational-wise too complex optimal control techniques for real-time applications. Secondly, taking advantage of MPC's systematic fashion to perform nonlinear control synthesis eases the design of an optimal control law. The proposed theory is illustrated by simulation on the Duffing oscillator.

International audience

We present a computational framework for identifying a set of initial states from which all trajectories of a piecewise affine (PWA) system satisfy a Linear Temporal Logic (LTL) formula over a set of linear predicates in its state variables. Our approach is based on the construction and refinement of finite abstractions of infinite systems. We derive conditions guaranteeing the equivalence of an infinite system and its finite abstraction with respect to a specific temporal logic formula and propose methods aimed at the construction of such formula-equivalent abstractions. We show that the proposed procedure can be implemented using polyhedral operations and analysis of finite graphs. While provably correct, the overall method is conservative and expensive. The proposed algorithms have been implemented as a software tool that is available for download. An illustrative example for a PWA gene network model is included.

We consider the problem of controlling a discrete-time piecewise affine (PWA) system from a specification given as a Linear Temporal Logic (LTL) formula over linear predicates in its state variables. We present a computational framework for finding initial states and feedback control strategies guaranteeing the satisfaction of such a specification by all the trajectories of the closed loop system. Our solution is based on abstracting the system to a finite transition system and on controlling the abstraction from an LTL specification.