Modeling error or external disturbances can severely degrade the performance of Model Predictive Control (MPC) in real-world scenarios. Robust MPC (RMPC) addresses this limitation by optimizing over feedback policies but at the expense of increased computational complexity. Tube MPC is an approximate solution strategy in which a robust controller, designed offline, keeps the system in an invariant tube around a desired nominal trajectory, generated online. Naturally, this decomposition is suboptimal, especially for systems with changing objectives or operating conditions. In addition, many tube MPC approaches are unable to capture state-dependent uncertainty due to the complexity of calculating invariant tubes, resulting in overly-conservative approximations. This work presents the Dynamic Tube MPC (DTMPC) framework for nonlinear systems where both the tube geometry and open-loop trajectory are optimized simultaneously. By using boundary layer sliding control, the tube geometry can be expressed as a simple relation between control parameters and uncertainty bound; enabling the tube geometry dynamics to be added to the nominal MPC optimization with minimal increase in computational complexity. In addition, DTMPC is able to leverage state-dependent uncertainty to reduce conservativeness and improve optimization feasibility. DTMPC is demonstrated to robustly perform obstacle avoidance and modify the tube geometry in response to obstacle proximity.
A number of works have been published on the stability, feasibility, and performance of linear tube MPC @cite_10 @cite_13 @cite_8 . While this is an effective strategy to achieve robustness, decoupling the nominal MPC problem and controller design is suboptimal. Rakovi @cite_17 showed that the region of attraction can be enlarged by parameterizing the problem with the open-loop trajectory and tube size. The authors presented the homothetic tube MPC (HTMPC) algorithm that treated the state and control tubes as homothetic copies of a fixed cross-section shape, enabling the problem to be parameterized by the tube’s centers (i.e., open-loop trajectory) and a cross-section scaling factor. The work was extended to tubes with varying shapes, known as elastic tube MPC (ETMPC), but at the expense of computational complexity @cite_12 . Both HTMPC and ETMPC possess strong theoretical properties and have the potential to significantly improve performance but a nonlinear extension has yet to be developed.
@cite_8 @cite_10 @cite_13 @cite_12 @cite_17
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In this paper, we present a novel constraint tightening approach for nonlinear robust model predictive control (MPC). This approach uses a simple constructive constraint tightening based on growing tubes. Contrary to other approaches, we require no complex offline computations to obtain a stabilizing control law. Instead, we consider the notion of incremental stabilizability and design tubes based on an estimate of the achievable exponential decay rate. In addition, we show how this tightening can be used as an ad-hoc modification to improve the robustness of MPC without terminal constraints. We study the system theoretic properties of the resulting closed-loop system, including bounds on the region of attraction and the minimal robust positively invariant (RPI) set. Within an MPC framework without terminal constraints, the proposed constraint tightening leads to a nonlinear robust controller without complex design procedures, which makes it appealing for practical applications. This paper introduces elastic tube model predictive control (MPC) synthesis. The proposed framework is a natural generalization of the rigid and homothetic tube MPC design methods. The cross-sections of the employed state and control tubes are allowed to change more elastically, while the local component of the tubes control policy is permitted to take a more general form. The related stabilizing terminal conditions are also adequately generalized in order to take advantage of more flexible tubes and tubes control policy parameterizations. These novel features result in an improved tube MPC at the cost of a manageable increase in computational complexity. This paper addresses the attraction domain of model-based predictive control (MPC) for nonlinear systems with control input and state constraints. Based on a stability condition of nonlinear MPC, a method to determine the terminal weighting term in the performance index and the terminal stabilising control law to maximise the domain of attraction of the nonlinear MPC is proposed. The problem of maximisation of the attraction region is recast as a well-defined optimisation problem. By an LMI based optimisation approach, the terminal weighting item and fictitious terminal stabilising control law axe optimised to enlarge the attraction domain and hence the feasibility domain of the nonlinear MPC method. The proposed method is illustrated by a numerical example and favourably compared with existing results. This paper focuses on the design of a tube-based Model Predictive Control law for the control of constrained mobile robots in off-road conditions with longitudinal slip while ensuring robustness and stability. A time-varying trajectory tracking error model is used, where uncertainties are assumed to be bounded and additive. The robust tube-based MPC is compared with other motion control techniques through simulation and physical experiments. These tests show the satisfactory behavior of the presented control strategy.