Event-Triggered Distributed Control of Nonlinear Interconnected Systems Using Online Reinforcement Learning With Exploration.

Abstract

In this paper, a distributed control scheme for an interconnected system composed of uncertain input affine nonlinear subsystems with event triggered state feedback is presented by using a novel hybrid learning scheme-based approximate dynamic programming with online exploration. First, an approximate solution to the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation is generated with event sampled neural network (NN) approximation and subsequently, a near optimal control policy for each subsystem is derived. Artificial NNs are utilized as function approximators to develop a suite of identifiers and learn the dynamics of each subsystem. The NN weight tuning rules for the identifier and event-triggering condition are derived using Lyapunov stability theory. Taking into account, the effects of NN approximation of system dynamics and boot-strapping, a novel NN weight update is presented to approximate the optimal value function. Finally, a novel strategy to incorporate exploration in online control framework, using identifiers, is introduced to reduce the overall cost at the expense of additional computations during the initial online learning phase. System states and the NN weight estimation errors are regulated and local uniformly ultimately bounded results are achieved. The analytical results are substantiated using simulation studies.