AutomaticaPub Date : 2025-06-13DOI: 10.1016/j.automatica.2025.112441
Mario Sassano
{"title":"Infinite-horizon optimal control of nonlinear discrete-time systems: HJB pde, Hamiltonian dynamics and invariant manifolds","authors":"Mario Sassano","doi":"10.1016/j.automatica.2025.112441","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.automatica.2025.112441","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Nonlinear discrete-time optimal control problems are studied over an infinite horizon with the aim of establishing a connection between the solution of the Bellman equation and the trajectories of the Hamiltonian difference dynamics associated with the problem. First, a discrete-time counterpart of the Hamilton–Jacobi–Bellman partial differential equation is introduced and discussed. The latter is then further instrumental for showing that a certain manifold, involving the costate variable and the gradient of the value function, is invariant for the Hamiltonian dynamics, hence recovering a well-known property of continuous-time optimal control problems. This feature is then leveraged to envision an episodic learning strategy based on the notion of invariant manifold.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":55413,"journal":{"name":"Automatica","volume":"179 ","pages":"Article 112441"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-06-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144271627","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}
{"title":"Decentralized estimation for linear complex networks with multi-level quantization","authors":"Dongdong Yu , Yuanqing Xia , Di-Hua Zhai , Yuan Zhang","doi":"10.1016/j.automatica.2025.112401","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.automatica.2025.112401","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper addresses the decentralized state estimation problem for a class of discrete-time linear complex networks under communication constraints. Due to the limited communication bandwidth and radiated power, a multi-level quantization (MLQ) scheme is utilized to compress the measurement innovations transmitted over the sensor-to-estimator communication channel. In each node, a modified approximate minimum mean-square error (MMSE) estimator is constructed by sequentially fusing the quantized innovations from the corresponding sensors. The designed estimator is of a decentralized framework and relies on the state estimates and estimation error covariances from neighboring nodes. Furthermore, the quantization levels are obtained by minimizing the estimation error covariance and a sufficient condition is established to ensure the bounded estimation error covariance in each node. Finally, simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed decentralized estimation algorithm.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":55413,"journal":{"name":"Automatica","volume":"179 ","pages":"Article 112401"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-06-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144271640","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}
{"title":"C2TE: Coordinated constrained task execution design for ordering-flexible multi-vehicle platoon merging","authors":"Bin-Bin Hu , Yanxin Zhou , Henglai Wei , Shuo Cheng , Chen Lv","doi":"10.1016/j.automatica.2025.112426","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.automatica.2025.112426","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In this paper, we propose a distributed coordinated constrained task execution (C2TE) algorithm that enables a team of vehicles from different lanes to cooperatively merge into an <em>ordering-flexible platoon</em> maneuvering on the desired lane. Therein, the platoon is flexible in the sense that no specific spatial ordering sequences of vehicles are predetermined. To attain such a flexible platoon, we first separate the multi-vehicle platoon (MVP) merging mission into two stages, namely, pre-merging regulation and <em>ordering-flexible platoon</em> merging, and then formulate them into distributed constraint-based optimization problems. Particularly, by encoding longitudinal-distance regulation and same-lane collision avoidance subtasks into the corresponding control barrier function (CBF) constraints, the proposed algorithm in Stage 1 can safely enlarge sufficient longitudinal distances among adjacent vehicles. Then, by encoding lateral convergence, longitudinal-target attraction, and neighboring collision avoidance subtasks into CBF constraints, the proposed algorithm in Stage 2 can efficiently achieve the <em>ordering-flexible platoon</em>. Note that the <em>ordering-flexible platoon</em> is realized through the interaction of the longitudinal-target attraction and time-varying neighboring collision avoidance constraints simultaneously. Feasibility guarantee and rigorous convergence analysis are both provided under strong nonlinear couplings induced by flexible orderings. Finally, experiments using three autonomous mobile vehicles (AMVs) are conducted to verify the effectiveness and flexibility of the proposed algorithm, and extensive simulations are performed to demonstrate its robustness, adaptability, and scalability when tackling vehicles’ sudden breakdown, new appearing, different number of lanes, mixed autonomy, and large-scale scenarios, respectively.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":55413,"journal":{"name":"Automatica","volume":"179 ","pages":"Article 112426"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-06-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144262388","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 : 2025-06-11DOI: 10.1016/j.automatica.2025.112390
Antonio Furchì , Martina Lippi , Alessandro Marino , Andrea Gasparri
{"title":"A finite-time distributed dynamic consensus protocol for tracking maximum (minimum) reference signals","authors":"Antonio Furchì , Martina Lippi , Alessandro Marino , Andrea Gasparri","doi":"10.1016/j.automatica.2025.112390","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.automatica.2025.112390","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Tracking the maximum or minimum of a set of signals is a fundamental task in multiple applications involving coordinated multi-agent systems. This work tackles the dynamic maximum or minimum consensus problem in networked multi-agent systems. Within this framework, every agent has access to a local exogenous signal, and the objective is to ensure that all agents track the time-varying maximum (minimum) signal of the exogenous signals by only relying on local information. We present a novel distributed protocol achieving this objective in finite time under undirected switching network topologies. The assumptions in our study pertain solely to the connectivity of the network topologies and the knowledge of the bounds on the derivatives of the exogenous signals. Numerical results with sinusoidal and piecewise linear signals corroborate the theoretical findings.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":55413,"journal":{"name":"Automatica","volume":"179 ","pages":"Article 112390"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-06-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144253724","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 : 2025-06-09DOI: 10.1016/j.automatica.2025.112407
Rick Schieni , Michael Malisoff , Laurent Burlion
{"title":"Interval contractor-based reference governor for a class of uncertain nonlinear systems","authors":"Rick Schieni , Michael Malisoff , Laurent Burlion","doi":"10.1016/j.automatica.2025.112407","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.automatica.2025.112407","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper proposes a novel interval contractor-based reference governor design for a class of nonlinear systems containing both polynomial terms and unknown constant parameters which are valued in known bounded intervals. The reference governor ensures that input and state polynomial constraints are satisfied, despite uncertainties in the model and constraints. Its synthesis computes a maximal output admissible set (or MOAS), and requires adding new components to the state vector. It also uses interval analysis methods to shrink the bounds for the uncertain parameters over time. The MOAS computations are performed offline using a grid of the uncertain parameter bounds. Then, the reference governor is computed online by combining bisection algorithms and interval contractors.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":55413,"journal":{"name":"Automatica","volume":"179 ","pages":"Article 112407"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-06-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144240186","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 : 2025-06-07DOI: 10.1016/j.automatica.2025.112406
Irene Schimperna, Lalo Magni
{"title":"On Incremental Input-to-State Stability of interconnected discrete-time systems","authors":"Irene Schimperna, Lalo Magni","doi":"10.1016/j.automatica.2025.112406","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.automatica.2025.112406","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In this technical communique, the properties of interconnected Incrementally Input-to-State Stable (<span><math><mi>δ</mi></math></span>ISS) discrete-time systems are studied. In particular, a small gain theorem for <span><math><mi>δ</mi></math></span>ISS systems with feedback connection is derived with two formulations: one based on the definition of <span><math><mi>δ</mi></math></span>ISS, and one based on <span><math><mi>δ</mi></math></span>ISS-Lyapunov functions.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":55413,"journal":{"name":"Automatica","volume":"179 ","pages":"Article 112406"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-06-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144229817","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 : 2025-06-07DOI: 10.1016/j.automatica.2025.112410
Liang Liu, Rulan Bai
{"title":"Output feedback control of stochastic systems in strict-feedforward form with time delays","authors":"Liang Liu, Rulan Bai","doi":"10.1016/j.automatica.2025.112410","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.automatica.2025.112410","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>A novel output feedback control strategy for a class of stochastic nonlinear systems subject to strict-feedforward form and multiple time delays is mainly investigated in this paper. The parameter-dependent observer and output feedback controller of the studied system are firstly presented. And then, the equivalent form of the original system can be obtained via introducing the corresponding parameter-dependent coordinate transformation. Finally, the global asymptotic stability of the closed-loop system is verified by using the stability theory of stochastic nonlinear time delay systems and constructing the suitable Lyapunov–Krasovskii functional. The theoretical result is verified through two examples.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":55413,"journal":{"name":"Automatica","volume":"179 ","pages":"Article 112410"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-06-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144240183","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 : 2025-06-07DOI: 10.1016/j.automatica.2025.112393
Han Wang, Antonis Papachristodoulou, Kostas Margellos
{"title":"Distributed safe control design and probabilistic safety verification for multi-agent systems","authors":"Han Wang, Antonis Papachristodoulou, Kostas Margellos","doi":"10.1016/j.automatica.2025.112393","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.automatica.2025.112393","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We propose distributed iterative algorithms for safe control design and safety verification for networked multi-agent systems. These algorithms rely on distributing a control barrier function (CBF) related quadratic programming (QP) problem assuming the existence of CBFs. The proposed distributed algorithm addresses infeasibility issues of existing schemes via a cooperation mechanism between agents. The resulting control input is guaranteed to be optimal, and satisfies CBF constraints of all agents. Furthermore, a truncated algorithm is proposed to facilitate computational implementation. The performance of the truncated algorithm is evaluated using a distributed safety verification algorithm. The algorithm quantifies safety for multi-agent systems probabilistically by means of CBFs. Both upper and lower bounds on the probability of safety are obtained using the so called scenario approach. Both the scenario sampling and safety verification procedures are fully distributed. The efficacy of our algorithms is demonstrated by an example on multi-robot collision avoidance.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":55413,"journal":{"name":"Automatica","volume":"179 ","pages":"Article 112393"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-06-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144240182","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 : 2025-06-07DOI: 10.1016/j.automatica.2025.112408
Xing Hu , Jinhui Zhang , Zheng-Guang Wu
{"title":"Predictor-based composite disturbance rejection control for discrete-time linear systems with input delay and disturbance","authors":"Xing Hu , Jinhui Zhang , Zheng-Guang Wu","doi":"10.1016/j.automatica.2025.112408","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.automatica.2025.112408","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In this paper, a new composite disturbance rejection control approach is proposed for a class of discrete-time systems with input delays and mutational disturbances. To deal with the input delay, a predicted state is designed and then the original system is transformed into a delay-free auxiliary system with unknown future disturbance. By designing a new Lagrange-interpolation-polynomial-based predictor, the disturbance is predicted, and the proposed predictor provides a fast convergence speed and the prediction error is small. Besides, to identify the unknown mutational points, a mutational points identification (MPI) strategy is proposed, based on which the composite disturbance rejection controller is further designed by combining a new discrete-time sliding mode controller and the disturbance predictor. It is shown that under proposed controller, system state will converge to a small region, and the deviations caused by the mutational points are bounded. Finally, the simulations illustrate the advantages of the proposed approach.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":55413,"journal":{"name":"Automatica","volume":"179 ","pages":"Article 112408"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-06-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144240184","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 : 2025-06-07DOI: 10.1016/j.automatica.2025.112403
Liang Xu , Youfeng Su , Tao Liu
{"title":"Cooperative robust parallel operation of multiple actuators over directed graphs","authors":"Liang Xu , Youfeng Su , Tao Liu","doi":"10.1016/j.automatica.2025.112403","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.automatica.2025.112403","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper investigates the cooperative robust parallel operation problem where a linear uncertain plant is collectively driven by multiple actuators that cooperate over directed graphs. In order to address both the uncertain parameters of the plant and the communication constraints imposed by the communication network, a distributed dynamic output feedback control law is devised based on the internal model principle. It is shown that the proposed control law can effectively achieve robust output regulation of the closed-loop system while ensuring plant input sharing among the actuators. The effectiveness of the proposed control law is demonstrated through a practical example.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":55413,"journal":{"name":"Automatica","volume":"179 ","pages":"Article 112403"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-06-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144240185","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}