Cooperative Control of Parallel Actuators for Linear Robust Output Regulation of Uncertain Linear Minimum-phase Plants

TL;DR

This paper develops robust output regulation control laws for uncertain linear minimum-phase plants using cooperative parallel actuators, addressing stability and communication challenges.

Contribution

It introduces a distributed dynamic output feedback control law that handles multiple actuators, including unstable ones, with minimal dependence on actuator count.

Findings

Control laws effectively regulate output despite uncertainties.

The approach accommodates unstable actuators.

Numerical examples validate the control strategies.

Abstract

This paper investigates the robust output regulation problem for an uncertain linear minimum-phase plant with cooperative parallel operation of multiple actuators. Building on the internal model approach, we first propose a dynamic output feedback control law to solve the robust output regulation problem with a single actuator. Then, we construct a distributed dynamic output feedback control law that is nearly independent of the number of actuators and incorporates coupling terms to address the linear robust output regulation problem with cooperative parallel operation of multiple actuators over undirected communication networks. We reveal the connection in the design of parameters between the dynamic output feedback control law under single actuator operation and the distributed dynamic output feedback control law under cooperative parallel operation with multiple actuators. Moreover, we remove the existing assumption that the actuator dynamics must be Hurwitz stable, thereby enabling the incorporation of unstable actuators in our framework. Finally, two numerical examples are provided to validate the effectiveness of the proposed control laws.