A tutorial on preview control systems

This paper gives a tutorial on preview control problems. In many control systems, it is required that the outputs should track the reference signals in the presence of exogenous disturbances. If the future information of the reference signal or the disturbances is available, then we can greatly improve the performance of transient responses. This kind of control problems are explained by using some practical examples. We then formulate and solve the H/sup /spl infin// preview control problem based on the state augmentation technique. The application of the H/sup /spl infin// preview control to the servomechanism design is also discussed. It was also shown by the numerical examples that the advantage of improving the control performance by utilising the finite future information on the exogenous signals (reference signal, disturbance).