Speaker
Description
Dynamical systems can be used to model a broad class of physical processes, and conservation laws give rise to system properties like passivity or port-Hamiltonian structure. An important problem in practical applications is to steer dynamical systems to prescribed target states, and feedback controllers provide a powerful tool to do so. However, controllers designed using classical methods do not necessarily obey energy principles, which makes it difficult to model the controller-plant interaction in a structured manner. To support structured controller design for nonlinear systems, we study modifications of classical control design methods. We combine the concepts of output feedback and optimal control and show that the corresponding controller exhibits passivity properties regardless of the original system structure. Furthermore, under the assumption that the plant is port-Hamiltonian, we state conditions for the controller to be port-Hamiltonian as well. Two dimensional numerical examples based physical models will illustrate benefits and current limitations of the method.
