Actor--Critic-Based Dynamic Event-Triggered Control for Hypersonic Flight Vehicles

Abstract

Hypersonic flight vehicles (HFVs) exhibit complex nonlinear dynamics and time-varying uncertainties, placing stringent demands on the adaptive learning capabilities of flight control systems. Meanwhile, the limited onboard communication and computational resources further require efficient resource utilization. To address these issues, this article proposes a dynamic event-triggered control (DETC) scheme based on actor–critic framework for HFVs, achieving synergistic optimization of control performance and resource conservation. First, an optimal event-triggered controller is developed within actor–critic framework to regulate the frequency of control input updates. A static event-triggered condition is formulated, and the stability of the closed-loop system is analyzed, with Zeno behavior eliminated, ensuring both stability and feasibility. Building on this, a dynamic variable is introduced, leading to a dynamic event-triggered condition that adaptively adjusts the trigger threshold based on real-time system states. Unlike static event-triggered mechanisms with fixed thresholds, this mechanism further optimizes the frequency of control input updates, achieving more efficient resource utilization while maintaining the desired control performance. Moreover, rigorous theoretical analysis demonstrates that the closed-loop system is stable and Zeno behavior is eliminated under the DETC scheme. Finally, the effectiveness of our proposed DETC scheme is verified through a simulation example.