High-speed explicit nonlinear model predictive control

Abstract

In this paper a circuit-oriented approximate solution to an explicit nonlinear Model Predictive Control (NMPC) problem is proposed, based on piecewise-affine functions defined over simplicial domain partitions. The resulting controller is suitable for circuit implementation in programmable devices, such as microcontrollers or FPGA, enabling the application of NMPC to systems with low sampling times. The proposed approach is validated through hardware-in-the-loop simulations.