State estimation for ellipsoidally constrained dynamic systems with set-membership pseudo measurements

In many dynamic systems, the evolution of the state is subject to specific constraints. In general, constraints cannot easily be integrated into the prediction-correction structure of the Kalman filter algorithm. Linear equality constraints are an exception to this rule and have been widely used and studied as they allow for simple closed-form expressions. A common approach is to reformulate equality constraints into pseudo measurements of the state to be estimated. However, equality constraints define deterministic relationships between state components which is an undesirable property in Kalman filtering as this leads to singular covariance matrices. A second problem relates to the knowledge required to identify and define precise constraints, which are met by the system state. In this article, ellipsoidal constraints are introduced that can be employed to model a bounded region, to which the system state is constrained. This concept constitutes an easy-to-use relaxation of equality constraints. In order to integrate ellipsoidal constraints into the Kalman filter structure, a generalized filter framework is utilized that relies on a combined stochastic and set-membership uncertainty representation.