Periodic event-triggered control for nonlinear systems

Resources limitations of embedded systems and networked control systems have motivated the development of novel controller implementation paradigms in order to reduce the potential conservatism of traditional clock-driven setups. In this context periodic event-triggered control has recently been proposed. Based on a periodically evaluated and state-dependent criterion, it is decided, at every sampling instant, whether the control input needs to be updated or not. In this paper we propose a method for the design of periodic event-triggered controllers for nonlinear systems. We follow an emulation-based approach as we start from a known (continuously evaluated) event-triggered controller and we provide a systematic technique to select the sampling period and to redesign the triggering condition to approximately maintain the guarantees ensured by the original controller. The method is illustrated on a physical system and we compare the obtained results with other available event-based implementations.