AutomaticaPub Date : 2025-06-17DOI: 10.1016/j.automatica.2025.112448
Thomas Berger , Feliks Nüske
{"title":"Funnel control for Langevin dynamics","authors":"Thomas Berger , Feliks Nüske","doi":"10.1016/j.automatica.2025.112448","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.automatica.2025.112448","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In this study, we apply concepts from control theory to stochastic differential equations of Langevin type, motivated by complex dynamical systems in computational statistical physics, learning, or uncertainty quantification. The objective is to guarantee the evolution of the mean value in a prescribed performance funnel around a given sufficiently smooth reference signal. To achieve this objective we design a novel funnel controller and show its feasibility under certain structural conditions on the potential energy. The control design does not require any specific knowledge of the shape of the potential energy. We illustrate the results by a numerical simulation for a metastable double-well potential.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":55413,"journal":{"name":"Automatica","volume":"179 ","pages":"Article 112448"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-06-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144298390","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AutomaticaPub Date : 2025-06-17DOI: 10.1016/j.automatica.2025.112419
Bruno Martins Calazans Silva , João Yoshiyuki Ishihara , Eduardo Stockler Tognetti
{"title":"Time-varying output formation tracking of linear disturbed multi-agent systems by dynamic protocols","authors":"Bruno Martins Calazans Silva , João Yoshiyuki Ishihara , Eduardo Stockler Tognetti","doi":"10.1016/j.automatica.2025.112419","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.automatica.2025.112419","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This work proposes new conditions for the <span><math><msub><mrow><mi>H</mi></mrow><mrow><mi>∞</mi></mrow></msub></math></span> time-varying output formation tracking (HTVOFT) problem of identical linear multi-agent systems subject to exogenous disturbances in directed communication graphs. The proposed conditions allow the designer to choose the order of the protocol, including static, reduced, or full-order dynamic controllers. New sufficient linear matrix inequalities (LMI) conditions are presented to solve the HTVOFT problem with guaranteed <span><math><msub><mrow><mi>H</mi></mrow><mrow><mi>∞</mi></mrow></msub></math></span> performance. By proposing a polytopic LMI representation, we present a procedure that allows the design of protocol gains for a family of topologies regardless of the number of agents. Numerical experiments illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":55413,"journal":{"name":"Automatica","volume":"179 ","pages":"Article 112419"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-06-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144298387","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AutomaticaPub Date : 2025-06-17DOI: 10.1016/j.automatica.2025.112424
Guangpu Wu , Shibei Xue , Shan Ma , Sen Kuang , Daoyi Dong , Ian R. Petersen
{"title":"Arbitrary state transition of open qubit system based on switching control","authors":"Guangpu Wu , Shibei Xue , Shan Ma , Sen Kuang , Daoyi Dong , Ian R. Petersen","doi":"10.1016/j.automatica.2025.112424","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.automatica.2025.112424","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We present a switching control strategy based on Lyapunov control for arbitrary state transitions in open qubit systems. This strategy can prevent the state from entering invariant or singularity sets, effectively driving the system ultimately to a sufficiently small neighborhood of target states, which relaxes strict constraints on system models imposed by special target states compared to existing works. For the arbitrary transition, practical finite-time stability (PFTS) and its contractive version (PFTCS) conditions are given, respectively, where asymptotic stability is unattainable in open quantum systems in general. The efficacy of our method is demonstrated in examples of a qubit affected by amplitude damping, dephasing, and depolarizing decoherence.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":55413,"journal":{"name":"Automatica","volume":"179 ","pages":"Article 112424"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-06-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144298384","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AutomaticaPub Date : 2025-06-17DOI: 10.1016/j.automatica.2025.112442
Zhenxu Zhao, Ji Wang
{"title":"Safe delay-adaptive control of strict-feedback nonlinear systems with application in vehicle platooning","authors":"Zhenxu Zhao, Ji Wang","doi":"10.1016/j.automatica.2025.112442","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.automatica.2025.112442","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper presents a safe delay-adaptive control for a strict-feedback nonlinear ODE with a delayed actuator, whose dynamic is also a strict-feedback nonlinear ODE and the delay length is unknown. By formulating the delay as a transport PDE, the plant becomes a sandwich configuration consisting of nonlinear ODE-transport PDE-nonlinear ODE, where the transport speed in the PDE is unknown. We propose a predictor-based nonovershooting backstepping transformation to build the nominal safe delay-compensated control, guaranteeing that the output of the distal ODE safely tracks the target trajectory from one side without undershooting. To address the uncertainty in the delay, we incorporate recent delay-adaptive and safe adaptive technologies to build a safe adaptive-delay controller. The adaptive closed-loop system ensures (1) the exact identification of the unknown delay in finite time; (2) the output state stays in the safe region all the time, especially in the original safe region, instead of a subset, after a finite time; (3) all states are bounded, and moreover, they will converge to zero if the target trajectory is identically zero. In the simulation, the proposed control design is verified in the application of safe vehicle platooning. It regulates the spacing between adjacent vehicles to converge to a small distance and avoids collisions by ensuring they do not breach the safe distance at any time, even in the presence of large unknown delays and at a relatively high speed.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":55413,"journal":{"name":"Automatica","volume":"179 ","pages":"Article 112442"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-06-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144298383","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AutomaticaPub Date : 2025-06-17DOI: 10.1016/j.automatica.2025.112422
Reid D. Smith , Andrew G. Alleyne
{"title":"Set-to-set iterative learning control","authors":"Reid D. Smith , Andrew G. Alleyne","doi":"10.1016/j.automatica.2025.112422","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.automatica.2025.112422","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>For some iterative learning control (ILC) applications, obtaining sets or regions at specific times is desired rather than tracking a specific reference at these times. Within these sets or regions, no reference is provided for tracking, so either reference-free tracking of the sets must be done or a reference must be created within the sets. While existing approaches such as region-to-region ILC create a reference within the sets, this paper extends the ILC literature by developing a novel set-to-set (STS) ILC which performs reference-free tracking of the time-indexed sets. Analysis of the STS ILC demonstrates that by tracking the sets in a reference-free manner, the optimization cost of the STS ILC will lower bound that of alternative ILC methods. Additionally, despite an unknown repetitive disturbance, the STS ILC update law causes the output trajectory to lie within the sets at all desired times. Two case studies are used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach in allowing a linear system agent to visit polytopic set regions by learning the correct paths from one iteration to the next.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":55413,"journal":{"name":"Automatica","volume":"179 ","pages":"Article 112422"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-06-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144298381","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AutomaticaPub Date : 2025-06-17DOI: 10.1016/j.automatica.2025.112425
Bernd Kolar, Johannes Schrotshamer, Markus Schöberl
{"title":"A dual geometric test for forward-flatness","authors":"Bernd Kolar, Johannes Schrotshamer, Markus Schöberl","doi":"10.1016/j.automatica.2025.112425","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.automatica.2025.112425","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Forward-flatness is a generalization of static feedback linearizability and a special case of a more general flatness concept for discrete-time systems. Recently, it has been shown that this practically quite relevant property can be checked by computing a unique sequence of involutive distributions which generalizes the well-known static feedback linearization test. In this paper, a dual test for forward-flatness based on a unique sequence of integrable codistributions is derived. Since the main mathematical operations for determining this sequence are the intersection of codistributions and the calculation of Lie derivatives of 1-forms, it is computationally quite efficient. Furthermore, the formulation with codistributions also facilitates a comparison with the existing discrete-time literature regarding the closely related topic of dynamic feedback linearization, which is mostly formulated in terms of 1-forms rather than vector fields. The presented results are illustrated by two examples.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":55413,"journal":{"name":"Automatica","volume":"179 ","pages":"Article 112425"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-06-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144298380","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AutomaticaPub Date : 2025-06-13DOI: 10.1016/j.automatica.2025.112444
Shijie Wang , Haichao Gui , Rui Zhong
{"title":"Attitude estimation via matrix Fisher distributions on SO(3) using non-unit vector measurements","authors":"Shijie Wang , Haichao Gui , Rui Zhong","doi":"10.1016/j.automatica.2025.112444","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.automatica.2025.112444","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This note presents a novel Bayesian attitude estimator with the matrix Fisher distribution on the special orthogonal group, which can smoothly accommodate both unit and non-unit vector measurements. The posterior attitude distribution is proven to be a matrix Fisher distribution with the assumption that non-unit vector measurement errors follow the isotropic Gaussian distributions and unit vector measurements follow the von-Mises Fisher distributions. Next, a global unscented transformation is proposed to approximate the full likelihood distribution with a matrix Fisher distribution for more generic cases of vector measurement errors following the non-isotropic Gaussian distributions. Following these, a Bayesian attitude estimator with the matrix Fisher distribution is constructed. Numerical examples are then presented. The proposed estimator exhibits advantageous performance compared to the previous Bayesian estimator with the matrix Fisher distributions and the classic multiplicative extended Kalman filter in the case of non-unit vector measurements.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":55413,"journal":{"name":"Automatica","volume":"179 ","pages":"Article 112444"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-06-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144271638","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AutomaticaPub Date : 2025-06-13DOI: 10.1016/j.automatica.2025.112423
Ruiliang Deng, Zongying Shi, Yisheng Zhong
{"title":"Multi-defender capture-the-flag game with convex target regions","authors":"Ruiliang Deng, Zongying Shi, Yisheng Zhong","doi":"10.1016/j.automatica.2025.112423","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.automatica.2025.112423","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study addresses the capture-the-flag game with general convex target regions and multiple defenders, a special type of reach-avoid games with two target regions wherein an attacker aims to first reach the flag region and next the return region without being captured by a team of defenders. The game process can be divided into two phases: before the attacker reaches the flag region and after. We handle the two game phases in a recursive manner to characterize the value of the game through optimization problems. We establish that the value of the second game phase equals the optimal value of a convex optimization problem, and the value of the overall capture-the-flag game equals the optimal value of a quasi-convex optimization problem. We demonstrate that the quasi-convex optimization problem has a unique minimum point when the value of the capture-the-flag game is larger than that of the second game phase. Furthermore, we prove that the maximum number of defenders ensuring the game value is two, which is a useful result for assigning multiple defenders to capture multiple attackers. Finally, we propose an iterative algorithm to solve the quasi-convex optimization problem.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":55413,"journal":{"name":"Automatica","volume":"179 ","pages":"Article 112423"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-06-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144271658","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AutomaticaPub Date : 2025-06-13DOI: 10.1016/j.automatica.2025.112405
Can Zhao , Liwei An
{"title":"Collision/obstacle avoidance distributed cooperative output regulation of multi-robot systems","authors":"Can Zhao , Liwei An","doi":"10.1016/j.automatica.2025.112405","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.automatica.2025.112405","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper investigates the collision/obstacle avoidance problem in the distributed cooperative output regulation of multi-robot systems (MRSs). Due to the existence of obstacles, the original reference signals may conflict with the obstacle regions. The simultaneous consideration of obstacle avoidance and collision avoidance seriously increases the risk of <em>deadlocks</em>. To address these issues, a distributed command governor equipped with a distributed adaptive observer and an online projection planner is designed. When the reference signal does not conflict with obstacle regions, a safe command signal is generated by the distributed adaptive observer. When the reference signal conflicts with obstacle regions, the planner projects the reference signal onto the boundary of the obstacle region and adaptively adjusts the projected signal via multiple barrier functions and decision variables to generate a safe command signal. It is shown that the <em>deadlocks</em> are excluded and the asymptotic convergence of the tracking error is guaranteed. Finally, the proposed scheme is applied to the nonholonomic mobile robots to demonstrate its effectiveness.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":55413,"journal":{"name":"Automatica","volume":"179 ","pages":"Article 112405"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-06-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144271657","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AutomaticaPub Date : 2025-06-13DOI: 10.1016/j.automatica.2025.112434
Li Deng, Zhan Shu, Tongwen Chen
{"title":"Robust MPC with event-triggered learning for unknown linear time-varying systems","authors":"Li Deng, Zhan Shu, Tongwen Chen","doi":"10.1016/j.automatica.2025.112434","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.automatica.2025.112434","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper is concerned with robust model predictive control (MPC) for unknown linear time-varying (LTV) systems where all time-varying system matrices are assumed to belong to an unknown polytope. Based on the current observation only, an event-triggered learning scheme involving a model estimation and a polytope learning is proposed, leading to the reduction of the number of learning iterations and the guarantee of the convergence of learning. With the learned polytope, a robust MPC controller subject to a mixed state-input constraint is purposely designed to minimize the upper bound of a worst-case infinite horizon objective function with a discount factor. A matching error is constructed to connect two consecutive learned polytopes and accordingly the input-to-state stability is analyzed. Two examples are used to show the effectiveness of the proposed approach.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":55413,"journal":{"name":"Automatica","volume":"179 ","pages":"Article 112434"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-06-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144271639","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}