TECHNIQUE FOR SWITCHING BETWEEN CONTROLLERS

A controller design for switching between m linear multivariable controllers each of whom stabilizes a linear plant has been presented. A Youla-Kucera factorization was exploited in the interest of obtaining a closed-loop system that is exponentially stable for any switching signal σ(t) in the absence of plant model uncertainty. Robustness to practical model uncertainty was also considered and lower and upper bounds on the tolerable magnitude of unstructured additive plant uncertainty were presented. Numerical example demonstrated that the two controller degrees of freedom in the proposed controller design could be used to separately modify the closed-loop steady-state (with respect to σ(t)) performance and the switching transients.