Linear Multivariable Control Engineering Using GNU Octave

Abstract

Closed-loop control has a long history and is everywhere present, in nature, in humans and in all kinds of engineering systems from unmanned, autonomous vehicles, mobile robots and robots in automation to industrial manufacturing systems and automated plants, process control, medical systems and others.Control engineering is a vivid multidisciplinary field with many classical and new methods and results and plays an important role in almost all fields from aeronautics, mechatronics, robotics, process management, chemical engineering, to biomedical engineering.Today's engineering systems become more and more complex, which means that multiple output signals are to be monitored and multiple command signals are to be controlled simultaneously.More and more systems are equipped with embedded control systems.Multiple controllers for different purposes cooperate in complex systems with sensors and actuators and among each other; in cyber-physical systems even over a communication network.Today's controllers are mostly algorithms implemented in software.As a result, not only engineers but also students and practitioners in industry with a background in computer science who have specialised in applications of informatics to engineering systems are faced with control tasks, especially in robotics, in the design of autonomous cars, vehicles, etc.In other words, in the overlap of computer science and engineering, some knowledge of control concepts is needed.Students who attended a one-module undergraduate course with a focus on signal processing and single-input, single-output (SISO) systems might wonder which concepts and methods can be extended to multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) systems and what more recent, "modern" control concepts and algorithms are available.It is one of the aims of this book to show what methods and results learned for single-variable systems are also applicable to multivariable systems and what are particularities of multiple-variable systems.There is a large body of specialised publications on various advanced control topics available in the literature addressing nonlinear systems, discrete systems, neural network-based control, distributed control and so on.This textbook is on multivariable system and is confined to continuous linear time-invariant (LTI) systems vii viii Preface to keep the book manageable.The structured text covers a broad spectrum of topics from decentralised control to some major more "modern" control techniques such as optimal control, robust control and the use of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs).The aim of the structured text is to present an in-depth introductory survey of several fundamental advanced control concepts and techniques with an emphasis on ideas, an understanding of key concepts, and on results.In line with this, the book addresses master programme students in the overlap of engineering and computer science as well as interested practitioners working in various application fields.The presentation of major control topics is intended to be on a level between the one of textbooks on single-variable systems and the one of advanced more system theoretical books.As usual, the presentation of control concepts is in a mathematical framework.Control concepts and results are explained underpinned by mathematical developments.However, the focus is not on more or less lengthy proofs of theorems.Formal proofs of theorems are mostly omitted in favour of numerous elaborated illustrating small examples.Moreover, throughout the text, free open-source mathematical software GNU Octave is used so that readers who do not have a license or access to the commercial software Matlab and its toolboxes can download Octave, the freely available parser YALMIP and a free LMI solver to rerun the examples in the book on their computer.The Octave script language is quite similar to the one of the commercial software program Matlab .In some cases, the open-source software package Scilab is also used.