Event-Triggered Control

Event-triggered controls are a class of feedback controls whose values are only changed when it is essential to do so, to meet a prescribed control objective. Feedback controls are a class of state dependent forcing functions that are used in dynamic systems, to ensure that solutions of the systems enjoy a prescribed property, such as global asymptotic stabilization to an equilibrium, or analogous robustness properties like robust global asymptotic stability where the global asymptotic stability still holds even if there are uncertainties in the dynamics. Global asymptotic stability is a key concept from the theory of ordinary differential equations that can ensure that a system tracks a desired path, such as a flight path for an aerial vehicle. Applying event-triggered controls entails finding trigger rules that say when the control value should change, and then deciding what the new control values should be at those triggering times. The trigger rules use measurements from the dynamical system to decide whether or not to change the control value at each time. This contrasts with continuous time feedback controls, whose values are continuously changed. It also is different from standard zero-order hold controls, whose values change at a sequence of times that are independent of the state of the dynamics.

Event-triggered controls are widely used for communication networks, where communication constraints make event-triggered controls an attractive alternative to traditional control designs that would instead call for unnecessarily frequent changes in the control values. For these applications, event-triggered methods sometimes entail co-designing controls and priority assignments, to resolve contentions on shared communication networks. Another significant application for event-triggered control is in marine robotics, especially in the control of underwater vehicles that can be used in ecological robotics to help understand the effects of pollution and other environmental challenges. Marine robotic applications sometimes require delay compensating event-triggered control methods, to handle cases where only time lagged measurements from the dynamic system are available, or cases where there is a time lag before a change in the control value can impact the dynamics. Click here for more about this project. Below are references on event-triggered control. Click on the titles to see presentations or papers.

References:

1. Alyahia, S., C. Barbalata, M. Malisoff, and F. Mazenc, "Dynamic event-triggered control of linear continuous-time systems," submitted in April 2023, 17pp., in review.
2. Heemels, M., "Resource-aware control in a hyperconnected world with applications to cooperative driving," Plenary Lecture, 57th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, December 18, 2018.
3. Heemels, M., K. Johansson, and P. Tabuada, "An introduction to event-triggered and self-triggered control,'' in Proceedings of the 51st IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, 2012, pp. 3270-3285.
4. Malisoff, M., F. Mazenc, and C. Barbalata, "Event-triggered control under unknown input and unknown measurement delays using interval observers,'' IEEE Control Systems Letters, Volume 7, 2023, pp. 823-828.
5. Mazenc, F., M. Malisoff, and C. Barbalata, "Event-triggered prediction-based delay compensation approach," IEEE Control Systems Letters, Volume 6, 2022, pp. 2515-2520.
6. Mazenc, F., M. Malisoff, and C. Barbalata, "Event-triggered control for continuous-time linear systems with a delay in the input," Systems and Control Letters, Volume 159, January 2022, Paper 105075.
7. Mazenc, F., M. Malisoff, C. Barbalata, and Z.-P. Jiang, "Event-triggered control using a positive systems approach," European Journal of Control, Volume 62, 2021, pp. 63-68.
8. Mazenc, F., M. Malisoff, C. Barbalata, and Z.-P. Jiang, "Event-triggered control for systems with state delays using a positive systems approach," in Proceedings of the 60th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, 2021, pp. 552-557.
9. Mazenc, F., M. Malisoff, C. Barbalata, and Z.-P. Jiang, "Event-triggered control for discrete-time systems using a positive systems approach," IEEE Control Systems Letters, Volume 6, 2022, pp. 1843-1848.
10. Mazenc, F., M. Malisoff, C. Barbalata, and Z.-P. Jiang, "Event-triggered control for time-varying systems using a positive systems approach," Systems and Control Letters, Volume 161, March 2022, Paper 105131.
11. Yao, N., M. Malisoff, and F. Zhang, "Contention-resolving model predictive control for coupled control systems with a shared resource," Automatica, Volume 122, December 2020, Paper 109219.
12. Zhang, F., and M. Malisoff, "Recent advances in event-triggered control, parts i-ii," Co-Organized Minisymposia, SIAM Conference on Control and Its Applications, July 19-21, 2021 [Presented by Zoom].
13. Zuo, W., A. Chakravarthy, M. Malisoff, and Z. Chen, "Event-triggered control of robotic fish with reduced communication rate," IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, Volume 7, Issue 4, 2022, pp. 9405-9412.