Model-based nonlinear control of the human heart rate during treadmill exercising

We study a recently-proposed nonlinear model for human heart rate response that describes the central and peripheral local responses during and after treadmill exercise. The treadmill speed is the control input, and the control objective is to make the heart rate track a prescribed reference trajectory. Using a strict Lyapunov function analysis, we design new state and output feedback tracking controllers that render the error dynamics globally exponentially stable to the origin. This allows us to show that the feedback stabilized error dynamics enjoys input-to-state stable performance under actuator errors. This robustness condition quantifies the effects of deviations of the treadmill speed from the controller values. We illustrate our control design through simulations.