Cooperative-feedback control

In this work a control structure capable of handling controllability problems, which emerge from the presence of constraints, and improve the performance of the system by coordinating the use of several manipulated variables is introduced. In this scheme, the primary manipulated variable is used to handle the transient response while the auxiliary manipulated variable is used to keep the primary manipulated variable away from saturation. These two manipulated variables are coordinated through a user-defined non-linear function, which decides when and how the control structure changes. Its parameters determine the interaction between both inputs and the steady state value of each manipulated variable. The effectiveness of the proposed scheme is illustrated in two simulation examples.