{"title":"A Derivative Free Framework for Data-Driven Stabilization of Continuous-Time Linear Systems","authors":"Corrado Possieri","doi":"10.1109/LCSYS.2025.3581876","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/LCSYS.2025.3581876","url":null,"abstract":"This letter presents a novel data-driven framework for the design of control systems in the continuous-time domain. Differently from conventional methodologies that rely on measurements or estimates of the time derivatives of the plant state, the proposed approach utilizes filters of the input and the state of the plant to derive a parameterization for continuous-time linear time-invariant feedback systems. This parameterization is solely dependent on measurable quantities, enabling the direct application of linear matrix inequalities to solve stabilization problems. Furthermore, the framework explicitly addresses process and measurement noise, resulting in robust controller synthesis.","PeriodicalId":37235,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Control Systems Letters","volume":"9 ","pages":"1219-1224"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2025-06-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144581591","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Orhan Eren Akgün;Áron Vékássy;Luca Ballotta;Michal Yemini;Stephanie Gil
{"title":"Friedkin-Johnsen Model is Distributed Gradient Descent","authors":"Orhan Eren Akgün;Áron Vékássy;Luca Ballotta;Michal Yemini;Stephanie Gil","doi":"10.1109/LCSYS.2025.3581718","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/LCSYS.2025.3581718","url":null,"abstract":"The Friedkin-Johnsen (FJ) model describes how agents adjust their opinions through repeated interactions while accounting for the influence of agents who are partially stubborn. In this letter, we demonstrate that the FJ model is stepwise equivalent to solving the average consensus problem via distributed gradient descent. This perspective provides a unifying framework that bridges opinion dynamics and optimization, enabling the application of well-established results from the optimization literature. To illustrate this, we examine the recently proposed FJ model with diminishing stubbornness and extend prior results that were concerned with fixed communication graphs to time-varying and jointly connected communication graphs. We derive convergence guarantees and analyze convergence rates under these relaxed assumptions. Finally, we present numerical experiments on random graphs to showcase the impact of diminishing stubbornness dynamics on convergence in both static and time-varying settings.","PeriodicalId":37235,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Control Systems Letters","volume":"9 ","pages":"1544-1549"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2025-06-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144606317","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Maria Teresa Chiri;Roberto Guglielmi;Gennaro Notomista
{"title":"Boundary Control for Stability and Invariance of Traffic Flow Dynamics: A Convex Optimization Approach","authors":"Maria Teresa Chiri;Roberto Guglielmi;Gennaro Notomista","doi":"10.1109/LCSYS.2025.3581868","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/LCSYS.2025.3581868","url":null,"abstract":"In this letter we propose an optimization-based boundary controller for traffic flow dynamics capable of achieving both stability and invariance conditions. The approach is based on the definition of Boundary Control Barrier Functionals, from which sets of invariance-preserving boundary controllers are derived. In combination with sets of stabilizing controllers, we reformulate the problem as a convex optimization program solved at each point in time to synthesize the boundary control inputs. We derive sufficient conditions for the existence of optimal controllers that ensure both stability and invariance.","PeriodicalId":37235,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Control Systems Letters","volume":"9 ","pages":"1333-1338"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2025-06-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144606322","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Homotopy-Based Single-Loop Policy Iteration for Zero-Sum Games of Unknown Linear Systems","authors":"Zhong Wang;Yongkai Ning;Yan Li;Xiang Zhang;Kangjia Fu;Xuesong Wu","doi":"10.1109/LCSYS.2025.3581500","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/LCSYS.2025.3581500","url":null,"abstract":"The simultaneous policy update algorithm (SPUA) has been extensively studied for linear zero-sum games due to its efficient single-loop iteration. However, selecting an appropriate initial matrix for the SPUA to satisfy the Newton-Kantorovich conditions and ensure convergence remains a challenging task, especially in model-free settings. In this letter, a homotopy-based single-loop policy iteration method is proposed for linear zero-sum games. The designed method is guaranteed to converge using only initial stabilizing controllers. And a homotopy-based approach is employed to compute these initial stabilizing controllers through a series of policy improvement iterations. This method enables efficient single-loop iterations without requiring an initial matrix guess, a predetermined stabilizing controller, or knowledge of system dynamics. Simulations are conducted, and the numerical results also demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.","PeriodicalId":37235,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Control Systems Letters","volume":"9 ","pages":"1694-1699"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2025-06-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144634780","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Observer-Based Environment Robust Control Barrier Functions for Safety-Critical Control With Dynamic Obstacles","authors":"Ying Shuai Quan;Jian Zhou;Erik Frisk;Chung Choo Chung","doi":"10.1109/LCSYS.2025.3581497","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/LCSYS.2025.3581497","url":null,"abstract":"This letter proposes a safety-critical controller for dynamic and uncertain environments, leveraging a robust environment control barrier function (ECBF) to improve robustness against the uncertainties associated with moving obstacles. The approach reduces conservatism, compared with a worst-case uncertainty approach, by incorporating a state observer for obstacles into the ECBF design. The safety-guaranteed controller is achieved by efficiently solving a quadratic programming problem. The effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated via a dynamic obstacle-avoidance problem for an autonomous vehicle, including comparisons with established baseline approaches.","PeriodicalId":37235,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Control Systems Letters","volume":"9 ","pages":"1051-1056"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2025-06-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=11045069","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144597762","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Learning-Based Control of the Consensus Value in Unknown Graphs","authors":"Florin Gogianu;Lucian Buşoniu;Irinel-Constantin Morărescu","doi":"10.1109/LCSYS.2025.3581494","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/LCSYS.2025.3581494","url":null,"abstract":"We consider the problem of optimal budget allocation for consensus reaching in unknown networks. The network is represented by a directed graph whose vertices corresponds to agents influencing each other. At discrete instants, agents are influenced by an external entity that intends to sway the consensus to a target value. Between two external influence instants, the states of the agents evolve continuously due to the network dynamics. Prior results establish that, in known networks, a water-filling strategy that targets the most influential agents first is optimal. In our approach to the unknown-network setup, the marketer uses the evolution between two influence instants to update a learned model of the graph. Then, the control allocation at the next marketing instant is done according to the water-filling strategy applied to the current model of the graph. Our main analytical contribution states that the sub-optimality of the budget allocation induced by the approximation of the graph is related to the error of the learning algorithm. Extensive numerical analysis illustrates the performance of our method and suggests a regularization term that improves it further.","PeriodicalId":37235,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Control Systems Letters","volume":"9 ","pages":"1093-1098"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2025-06-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144589426","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Challenges in Model Agnostic Controller Learning for Unstable Systems","authors":"Mario Sznaier;Mustafa Bozdag","doi":"10.1109/LCSYS.2025.3581262","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/LCSYS.2025.3581262","url":null,"abstract":"Model agnostic controller learning, for instance by direct policy optimization, has been the object of renewed attention lately, since it avoids a computationally expensive system identification step. Indeed, direct policy search has been empirically shown to lead to optimal controllers in a number of cases of practical importance. However, to date, these empirical results have not been backed up with a comprehensive theoretical analysis for general problems. In this letter we use a simple example to show that direct policy optimization is not directly generalizable to other seemingly simple problems. In such cases, direct optimization of a performance index can lead to unstable pole/zero cancellations, resulting in the loss of internal stability and unbounded outputs in response to arbitrarily small perturbations. We conclude this letter by analyzing several alternatives to avoid this phenomenon, suggesting some new directions in direct control policy optimization.","PeriodicalId":37235,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Control Systems Letters","volume":"9 ","pages":"1351-1356"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2025-06-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144606204","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Robust Output Feedback MPC for Constrained Linear Systems Based on Zonotopic Kalman Filter","authors":"Jingyu Zhang;Wentao Tang;Yuhu Wu;Xi-Ming Sun","doi":"10.1109/LCSYS.2025.3581490","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/LCSYS.2025.3581490","url":null,"abstract":"This letter presents a robust output feedback model predictive control (MPC) method integrating a zonotopic Kalman filter (ZKF) for constrained linear systems under disturbances. Firstly, A ZKF is used to increase estimation accuracy and its optimal gain is obtained via solving a discrete-time algebraic Riccati equation. Secondly, a robust output MPC strategy is proposed, where an efficient constraint-handling strategy utilizing zonotope properties to replace linear programming (LP) with matrix operations, significantly reducing computational load. The approach ensures recursive feasibility and exponential stability while maintaining computational tractability. Finally, two simulation examples demonstrate the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed method.","PeriodicalId":37235,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Control Systems Letters","volume":"9 ","pages":"1490-1495"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2025-06-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144606241","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Stabilization of Nonlinear Parameter Varying Systems Using LMIs: An Observer-Based Controller Framework","authors":"Shivaraj Mohite;Marouane Alma;S. Liu","doi":"10.1109/LCSYS.2025.3581496","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/LCSYS.2025.3581496","url":null,"abstract":"This letter investigates the observer-based stabilization problem for a class of disturbance-affected Nonlinear Parameter-Varying (NLPV) systems. We introduce a novel observer-controller framework that leverages Linear Matrix Inequality (LMI) conditions to guarantee robust performance. Unlike previous works that focus solely on state estimation, our approach integrates a controller based on the estimated states to ensure asymptotic stability and optimal disturbance attenuation. Through the deployment of the parameter-dependent Lyapunov (PDL) function and <inline-formula> <tex-math>${mathcal {H}}_{infty }$ </tex-math></inline-formula> criterion, a new LMI condition is synthesized to achieve the objective. Further, due to the judicious use of a variant of Young’s inequality, the reformulated Lipschitz property, and the matrix multiplier method presented in our previous works, the established LMI encompasses extra degrees of freedom from a feasibility point of view. The performance of the method is validated through simulations on a nonlinear time-varying pendulum system, demonstrating enhanced noise attenuation and faster convergence compared to existing approaches.","PeriodicalId":37235,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Control Systems Letters","volume":"9 ","pages":"1141-1146"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2025-06-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144589425","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Melanie Gallant;Christoph Mark;Paolo Pazzaglia;Johannes von Keler;Laura Beermann;Kevin Schmidt;Martina Maggio
{"title":"Soft-Constrained Stochastic MPC of Markov Jump Linear Systems: Application to Real-Time Control With Deadline Overruns","authors":"Melanie Gallant;Christoph Mark;Paolo Pazzaglia;Johannes von Keler;Laura Beermann;Kevin Schmidt;Martina Maggio","doi":"10.1109/LCSYS.2025.3581518","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/LCSYS.2025.3581518","url":null,"abstract":"Modern real-time control systems can sporadically exceed the computation deadlines, which may lead to a deterioration in performance or even instability if not actively accounted for. This letter proposes a stochastic model predictive control approach that incorporates deadline miss probabilities of subsequent control task executions in a scenario tree. To account for the effect of missed deadlines, we utilize Markov jump linear systems that allow us to prove mean-square stability and recursive feasibility under hard input and mixed hard/soft state constraints. The proposed stochastic controller is benchmarked using a Furuta pendulum, demonstrating improved performance and an increased feasible region compared to a nominal and a hard-constrained stochastic controller, respectively.","PeriodicalId":37235,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Control Systems Letters","volume":"9 ","pages":"1532-1537"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2025-06-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144634681","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}