Efficient Control of Nonlinear Noise-Corrupted Systems Using a Novel Model Predictive Control Framework

Model identification and measurement acquisition is always to some degree uncertain. Therefore, a framework for nonlinear model predictive control (NMPC) is proposed that explicitly considers the noise influence on nonlinear dynamic systems with continuous state spaces and a finite set of control inputs in order to significantly increase the control quality. Integral parts of NMPC are the prediction of system states over a finite horizon as well as the problem specific modeling of reward functions. For achieving an efficient and also accurate state prediction, the introduced framework uses transition densities approximated by means of axis-aligned Gaussian mixtures. The representation power of Gaussian mixtures is also used to model versatile reward functions. Thus, together with the prediction technique a closed-form calculation of the optimization problems arising from NMPC is possible. Additionally, an efficient algorithm for calculating an approximate value function of the corresponding optimal control problem employing dynamic programming is presented. Thus, the value function can be calculated off-line, which reduces the on-line computational burden significantly and also permits the use of long optimization horizons. The capabilities of the framework and especially the benefits that can be gained by incorporating the noise in the controller are illustrated by the example of a two-wheeled differential-drive mobile robot following a given path.