Mixed H2/H∞ design for a decentralized discrete variable structure control with application to mobile robots

In this paper, a decentralized discrete variable structure control via mixed H₂/H_∞ design was developed. In the beginning, the H₂-norm of output error and weighted control input was minimized to obtain a control such that smaller energy consumption with bounded tracking error was assured. In addition, a suitable selection of this weighted function (connected with frequency) could reduce the effect of disturbance on the control input. However, an output disturbance caused by the interactions among subsystems, modeling error, and external load deteriorated system performance or even brought about instability. In this situation, the H_∞-norm of weighted sensitivity between output disturbance and output error was minimized to attenuate the effect of output disturbance. Moreover, an appropriate selection of this weighted function (related to frequency) could reject the corresponding output disturbance. No solution of Diophantine equation was required; the computational advantage was especially dominated for low-order system. For further improving system performance, a switching control for every subsystem was designed. The proposed control (mixed H₂/H_∞ DDVSC) was a three-step design method. The stability of the overall system was verified by Lyapunov stability criterion. The simulations and experiments of mobile robot were carried out to evaluate the usefulness of the proposed method.