Output regulation for a class of positive switched systems

In this paper, a complete procedure for the study of the output regulation problem is established for a class of positive switched systems utilizing a multiple linear copositive Lyapunov functions scheme. The feature of the developed approach is that each subsystem is not required to has a solution to the problem. Moreover, two types of controllers and switching laws are devised. The first one depends on the state together with the external input and the other depends only the error. The conditions ensuring the solvability of the problem for positive switched systems are presented in the form of linear matrix equations plus linear inequalities under some mild constraints. Two examples are finally given to show the performance of the proposed control strategy.     

Consensus of first-order discrete-time multi-agent systems with time delays

This paper mainly considers the consensus for first-order discrete-time multi-agent systems w.r.t. two key parameters, the step size T and the delay τ. First, the consensus is recast into the concurrent stability for a series of trinomials. Then, for each associated trinomial, we derive a necessary and sufficient stability condition, based on proving the two invariance properties for the asymptotic behavior of the critical unitary roots. As a result, the exhaustive consensus region in the $T?\tau$ parameter space (i.e., the parameter set such that the multi-agent system reaches a consensus iff T and τ belong to that set) is determined. Furthermore, we show that the obtained result also applies to systems with diverse input delays, through an extra sufficient consensus condition. Finally, two illustrative examples are presented.     

Sampled observer-based adaptive output feedback fault-tolerant control for a class of strict-feedback nonlinear systems

This paper studies the sampled outputs-based adaptive fault-tolerant control problem for a class of strict-feedback uncertain nonlinear systems, where the nonlinear functions are allowed to include the unmeasured system states. Within the framework, a sampled output observer is introduced to jointly estimate the system states and parameters. By combining the estimated states and the supervisory switching strategy, an adaptive fault-tolerant controller is designed to achieve the desirable tracking performance. By using Lyapunov stability theory, it is proved that all the signals of the closed-loop systems are bounded and the tracking error converges to an adjustable neighbourhood of the origin eventually both in the fault free and faulty cases. Especially, if the outputs are available all the time, the proposed output feedback fault-tolerant control method can ensure the tracking error satisfy the prescribed performance bounds regardless of the faults. Finally, two examples are used to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.     

Viable immersion and invariance control for a class of nonlinear systems and its application to aero-engines

This paper presents a novel approach to stabilize a class of nonlinear systems with state constraints. The motivation behind this study is the need to develop a stabilizing state feedback controller that does not require the knowledge of Lyapunov function and can regulate the states to the equilibrium while meeting the constraints. By using an integration of two relatively new tools: immersion and invariance (I&I) theory and viability theory, a sufficient condition for stability and stabilizability of a general nonlinear affine system with state constraints is derived; Then, the related results are exploited to stabilize a class of nonlinear system in feedback form and with state constraints represented by inequalities and the viable I&I stabilizing state feedback controller is obtained constructively. Further, an application to a nonlinear aero-engine model with the temperature constraint is given to illustrate the applicability and the effectiveness of the proposed method. Finally, a comparative simulation is presented, highlighting the advantages of the viable I&I controller.     

Adaptive synchronization of multi-agent systems via variable impulsive control

This paper mainly focuses on the adaptive synchronization problem of multi-agent systems via distributed impulsive control method. Different from the existing investigations of impulsive synchronization with fixed time impulsive inputs, the proposed distributed variable impulsive protocol allows that the impulsive inputs are chosen within a time period (namely impulsive time window) which can be described by the distances of the left (right) endpoints or the centers between two adjacent impulsive time windows. Obviously, this kind of flexible control scheme is more effective in practical systems (especially for the complex environment with physical restrictions). Moreover, the proposed adaptive control technique is helpful to solve the problem with uncertain system parameters. By means of Lyapunov stability theory, impulsive differential equations and adaptive control technique, three sufficient impulsive consensus conditions are given to realize the synchronization of a class of multi-agent nonlinear systems. Finally, two numerical simulations are provided to illustrate the validity of the theoretical analysis.     

Distributed fault detection for nonlinear multi-agent systems under fixed-time observer

This paper mainly investigates the fault detection problem for nonlinear multi-agent systems with actuator faults. For fault detection, a fixed-time observer is proposed by employing auxiliary variable received from neighbor agents. Then, with the aid of the observer, a residual vector is introduced by the auxiliary variable to detect the faults occurring on any followers, and each observer can estimate the whole state of followers. Moreover, the convergence time is dependent on the parameters of the designed observer and independent of initial condition of system state. Finally, the theoretical result is verified by a simulation example.     

Event-triggered decentralized output-feedback control for interconnected nonlinear systems with input quantization

In this paper, the event-triggered decentralized control problem for interconnected nonlinear systems with input quantization is investigated. A state observer is constructed to estimate the unmeasurable states, and the state-dependent interconnections are accommodated by presenting some smooth functions. Then by employing backstepping technique and neural networks (NNs) approximation capability, a novel decentralized output feedback control strategy and an event-triggered mechanism are designed simultaneously. It is proved through Lyapunov theory that the closed-loop system is stable and the tracking property of all subsystems is guaranteed. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed scheme is illustrated by an example.     

Fault-tolerant control for commercial aircraft with actuator faults and constraints

In this paper, a constrained control scheme based on model reference adaptive control is investigated for the longitudinal motion of a commercial aircraft with actuator faults and saturation nonlinearities. Actuator faults and constraints are both important factors adversely affecting the stability and performance of flight control systems. An adaptive adjustment law based on Lyapunov function is utilized to adjust the fault-tolerant control law. Both additive and multiplicative faults are considered in the designed controller to deal with the three types of actuator faults: locked in place, loss of effectiveness, and bias. Moreover, different techniques are implemented in the basic and fault-tolerant controller to anti-windup. Proofs for the stability of the two modified controllers which improve the performance of control system operating in the presence of actuator faults and saturations are proposed. Finally, a numerical example of the anti-windup fault-tolerant controller for a commercial aircraft is demonstrated. The stability and performance improvements can be accrued with the presented fault-tolerant control scheme.     

Containment control for second-order nonlinear multi-agent systems with aperiodically intermittent position measurements

In some real systems, the intermittent communications and the inaccurate velocity measurements are usually inevitable. To overcome these two communication limitations, this article aims at investigating the containment control problem for a class of second-order multi-agent systems with inherent nonlinear dynamics and aperiodically intermittent position measurements. Under the case that the velocity information is unavailable, a distributed filter is introduced for each second-order follower. Based on the distributed filter, a novel intermittent containment control protocol without velocity measurements is designed. Some sufficient conditions are derived under the common assumption that only relative position measurements between the neighbouring agents are utilized intermittently, and these conditions ensure that the second-order nonlinear multi-agent systems can achieve containment control. Furthermore, some simpler containment conditions are obtained for multi-agent systems with double-integrator dynamics under aperiodically intermittent communications. Finally, numerical simulations are provided to verify the effectiveness of the theoretical results.     

Model free adaptive iterative learning control for a class of nonlinear systems with randomly varying iteration lengths

This paper proposes a novel model free adaptive iterative learning control scheme for a class of unknown nonlinear systems with randomly varying iteration lengths. By applying the dynamic linearization technique along the iteration axis, such systems can be transformed into iteration-depended time varying linear systems. Then, an improved model free adaptive iterative learning control scheme can be constructed only using input and output data of the system. From the rigorous theoretical analysis, it is shown that the mathematical expectation of tracking errors converge to zero as iteration increases. This design does not require any dynamic information of the ILC systems and prior information of randomly varying iteration lengths. An illustrative example verifies the effectiveness of the proposed design.     

A co-design methodology for cyber-physical systems under actuator fault and cyber attack

This paper investigates the controller design problem of cyber-physical systems (CPSs) to ensure the reliability and security when actuator faults in physical layers and attacks in cyber layers occur simultaneously. The actuator faults are time-varying, which cover bias fault, outage, loss of effectiveness and stuck. Besides that, some state-dependent cyber attacks are launched in control input commands and system measurement data channels, which may lead state information to the opposite direction. A novel co-design controller scheme is constructed by adopting a new Lyapunov function, Nussbaum-type function, and direct adaptive technique, which may further relax the requirements of actuator/sensor attacks information. It is proven that the states of the closed-loop system asymptotically converge to zero even if actuator faults, actuator attacks and sensor attack are time-varying and co-existing. Finally, simulation results are presented to show the effectiveness of the proposed control method.     

Sliding-mode consensus algorithms for disturbed second-order multi-agent systems

In this paper, both leaderless and leader-follower consensus problems for a class of disturbed second-order multi-agent systems are studied. Based on integral sliding-mode control, sliding-mode consensus protocols are proposed for leaderless and leader-follower multi-agent systems with disturbances, respectively. Firstly, for leaderless second-order multi-agent systems, a sliding-mode consensus protocol is proposed to make the agents achieve asymptotic consensus. Secondly, for leader-follower second-order multi-agent systems, a finite-time sliding-mode consensus protocol is designed to make the agents achieve consensus in finite time. Both kinds of consensus protocols inherit the anti-disturbance performance and robustness of sliding-mode control and require less communication information. Finally, two numerical simulations are given for leaderless and leader-follower second-order multi-agent systems to validate the efficiency of the proposed consensus protocols.     

Adaptive fault-tolerant shape control for nonlinear Lipschitz stochastic distribution systems

This paper addresses the problem of adaptive fault estimation and fault-tolerant control for a class of nonlinear non-Gaussian stochastic systems subject to time-varying loss of control effectiveness faults. In this work, time-varying faults, Lipschitz nonlinear property and general stochastic characteristics are taken into consideration in a unified framework. Instead of using the system output signal, the output distribution is adopted for shape control. Both the states and faults are simultaneously estimated by an adaptive observer. Then, a fault tolerant shape controller is designed to compensate for the faults and realize stochastic output distribution tracking. Both the fault estimation and the fault tolerant control schemes are designed based on linear matrix inequality (LMI) technique. Satisfactory performance has been obtained for a numerical simulation example. Furthermore the proposed scheme is successfully tested in a case study of particle size distribution control for an emulsion polymerization reactor.     

Periodic event-triggered resilient control for cyber-physical systems under denial-of-service attacks

This paper studies the problem of designing a resilient control strategy for cyber-physical systems (CPSs) under denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. By constructing an H_∞ observer-based periodic event-triggered control (PETC) framework, the relationship between the event-triggering mechanism and the prediction error is obtained. Then, inspired by the maximum transmission interval, the input-to-state stability of the closed-loop system is proved. Compared with the existing methods, a Zeno-free periodic PETC scheme is designed for a continuous-time CPS with the external disturbance and measurement noise. In particular, the objective of maximizing the frequency and duration of the DoS attacks is achieved without losing robustness. Finally, two examples are given to verify the effectiveness of the proposed approach.     

A new class of fixed-time bipartite consensus protocols for multi-agent systems with antagonistic interactions

In this paper, we study the fixed-time consensus problem for multi-agent systems with structurally balanced signed graph. A new class of fixed-time nonlinear consensus protocols is designed by employing the neighbor’s information. By using Lyapunov stability method, states of all agents can be guaranteed to reach agreement in a fixed time under our presented protocols, and the consensus values are the same in modulus but different in sign. Moreover, it is shown that the settling time is not dependent on the initial conditions, and it makes a good convenience to estimate the convergence time by just knowing the graph topology and the information flow of the multi-agent systems. Finally, two numerical examples are given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed consensus protocols.     

Fault diagnosis and fault-tolerant tracking control for discrete-time systems with faults and delays in actuator and measurement

In this paper, the fault diagnosis (FD) and fault-tolerant tracking control (FTTC) problem for a class of discrete-time systems with faults and delays in actuator and measurement is investigated. In the first step, a discrete delay-free transformation approach is introduced for an constructed augmented system such that the two-point-boundary-value (TPBV) problem with advanced and delayed items can be avoided. Then, the optimal fault-tolerant tracking controller (OFTTC) is proposed with respect to an equivalent reformed quadratic performance index. Moreover, by using the real-time system output rather than the residual errors, a reduced-order-observer-based fault diagnoser for the augmented system is designed to diagnose faults in actuator and measurement, and solve the physically unrealizable problem of proposed OFTTC. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed fault diagnoser and OFTTC is illustrated by a realistic design example for industrial electric heater.     

Stochastic consensus of discrete-time second-order multi-agent systems with measurement noises and time delays

We study the consensus control of discrete-time second-order multi-agents systems with time delays and multiplicative noises, where the consensus protocol is designed by both the local relative position measurements and each agent’s absolute velocity. Due to the existence of time delays and multiplicative noises, the classical methods for deterministic models with time delays cannot work. In this paper, we apply stochastic stability theorem of discrete-time stochastic delay equations to find some explicit sufficient conditions for both mean square and almost sure consensus. It is proven that for any given noise intensities and time delays, the second-order multi-agent consensus can be achieved by choosing appropriate control gains in the relative position measurement and absolute velocity, respectively. Numerical simulation is given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed protocols as well as the theoretical results.     

Leader-following consensus of nonlinear discrete-time multi-agent systems with limited communication channel capacity

This paper considers the problem of the leader-following consensus of generally nonlinear discrete-time multi-agent systems with limited communication channel capacity over directed fixed communication networks. The leader agent and all follower agents are with multi-dimensional nonlinear dynamics. We propose a novel kind of consensus algorithm for each follower agent based on dynamic encoding and decoding algorithms and conduct a rigorous analysis for consensus convergence. It is proved that under the consensus algorithm designed, the leader-following consensus is achievable and the quantizers equipped for the multi-agent systems can never be saturated. Furthermore, we give the explicit forms of the data transmission rate for the connected communication channel. By properly designing the system parameters according to restriction conditions, we can ensure the consensus and communication efficiency with merely one bit information exchanging between each pair of adjacent agents per step. Finally, simulation example is presented to verify the validity of results obtained.     

Static group synchronization of second-order multi-agent systems via pinning control

This paper investigates the expected static group synchronization problem of the second-order multi-agent systems via pinning control. For directed communication topology with spanning tree, based on Gershgorin disk theorem and the matrix property, a static pinning control protocol with fixed gains is first introduced and some sufficient and necessary static group synchronization criteria are also established. It is worth mentioning that a rigorous proof is also given that only one pinning node is needed to guarantee static group synchronization, which could be inferred that our protocol might be more economical and effective in large scale of multi-agent systems. Then, for weakly connected directed communication topology with nodes of zero in-degree, an adaptive pinning control applied to the node with zero in-degree is also proposed to achieve static group synchronization. Finally, the efficiency of the proposed protocols is verified by two simulation examples.