Remote quasi-soft variable structure control of dynamic plants with actuator saturation

Abstract

Implementation of a remote control setup requires handling the issues of finite sampling rate at the communication interfaces, as well as the delay and uncertainty of information transfer through network channels. With the effort to shorten the convergence time while retaining smooth inputs under actuator saturation soft Variable Structure Control (VSC) can be used. The favorable properties of the classical — continuous-time — formulation of soft VSC is extended in this work to discrete-time systems with multi-period delay. The control system design and stability analysis are performed directly in discrete time domain. The controller properties are proved analytically and verified in experiments involving inverted pendulum-on-a-cart system steered remotely via a communication network.