Observer-based controller for disturbance decoupling of max-plus linear systems with applications to a high throughput screening system in drug discovery

Max-plus linear systems are often used to model timed discrete-event systems, which represent system operations as discrete sequences of events in time. This paper presents the observer-based controller to solve the disturbance decoupling problem for max-plus linear systems where only estimations of system states are available for the controller. This observer-based controller leads to a greater control input than the one obtained with the output feedback strategy based on just-in-time criterion. A high throughput screening system in drug discovery illustrates this main result by showing that the scheduling obtained from the observer-based controller solving the disturbance decoupling problem is better than the scheduling obtained from the output feedback controller.