Abstract
In this paper, we summarize the research being carried out by the author and his group of graduate students on new control and observer design methods specifically tailored towards to control of smart and flexible structure applications. The new approaches are tailored to this specific application in the sense that they take into account the various types of available measurements and provide controllers and observers in terms of the various combinations of measurement variables. This approach of tailoring the controller and observer structure around the available measurement models has significant advantages over traditional approaches. Specifically these approaches introduce two new frameworks for controller and observer design, namely “Reciprocal State Space Framework” and “Matrix Second Order Framework”. Currently State Space Framework is a popular framework for control systems design in the sense that designers always transform the dynamic model of their application into state space form and then carry out the standard design techniques of this framework. However, we argue that there are many applications in which the dynamics, measurement models and performance constraints are such that it is unnecessary and cumbersome to force this transformation and instead the design can be carried out more easily in these newly introduced frameworks that are compatible with the plant dynamics, measurement models and performance constraints. Using these frameworks, simple control and observer designs are carried out with application to the problem of control of smart, flexible structures.
