Controlled Synchronisation of Continuous PWA Systems

Summary

In this paper, the controlled synchronisation problem for identical continuous piecewise affine (PWA) systems is addressed. Due to the switching nature of these systems, strategies common for controlled synchronisation can not be used. In this paper, an observer-based output-feedback control design solving the master-slave synchronisation problem for two PWA systems is proposed. The design of these dynamic controllers is based on the idea of, on the one hand, rendering the slave system convergent by means of feedback (which makes all its solutions converge to each other) and, on the other hand, guaranteeing that the closed-loop slave system has a bounded solution corresponding to zero synchronisation error. This implies that all solutions of the closed-loop slave system converge to this bounded solution with zero synchronisation error. The results are illustrated by application to a master-slave synchronisation problem of two mechanical systems with one-sided restoring characteristics.