Supervisory control of differentially flat systems based on abstraction

The limiting factor in most implementations of safety enforcing controllers is the model's complexity, and a common work-around includes the abstraction of the physical model, based on differential equations, to a finite symbolic model. We exploit the specific structure of a class of systems (t...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Colombo, Alessandro (Contributor), Del Vecchio, Domitilla (Contributor)
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering (Contributor)
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), 2013-04-11T18:02:18Z.
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Summary:The limiting factor in most implementations of safety enforcing controllers is the model's complexity, and a common work-around includes the abstraction of the physical model, based on differential equations, to a finite symbolic model. We exploit the specific structure of a class of systems (the differentially flat systems) to perform the abstraction. The objective is to construct a supervisor enforcing a set of safety rules, while imposing as little constraints as possible on the system's functionality. An example - a collision avoidance algorithm for a fleet of vehicles converging to an intersection - is presented. Our approach improves on previous results by providing a deterministic symbolic model irrespective of the stability properties of a system, and by addressing explicitly the problem of enforcing safety.
National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Award CNS 0930081)