H2 control with time domain constraints: theory and an application

In this paper we study the problem of minimizing the H₂ norm of a given transfer function subject to time-domain constraints on the time response of a different transfer function to a given test signal. The main result of the paper shows that this problem admits a minimizing solution in ℛ~H~₂. Moreover, rational solutions with performance arbitrarily close to optimal can be found by constructing families of approximating problems. Each one of these problems entails solving a finite-dimensional quadratic programming problem whose dimension can be determined before hand. These results are illustrated and experimentally validated by designing a controller for an active vision application.