Nonlinear Data-Driven Control via State-Dependent Representations

Recently, there has been renewed interest in data-driven control, that is, the design of controllers directly from observed data. In the case of linear time-invariant (LTI) systems, several approaches have been proposed that lead to tractable optimization problems. On the other hand, the case of nonlinear dynamics is considerably less developed, with existing approaches limited to at most rational dynamics and requiring the solution to a computationally expensive Sum of Squares (SoS) optimization. Since SoS problems typically scale combinatorially with the size of the problem, these approaches are limited to relatively low order systems. In this paper, we propose an alternative, based on the use of state-dependent representations. This idea allows for synthesizing data-driven controllers by solving at each time step an on-line optimization problem whose complexity is comparable to the LTI case. Further, the proposed approach is not limited to rational dynamics. The main result of the paper shows that the feasibility of this on-line optimization problem guarantees that the proposed controller renders the origin a globally asymptotically stable equilibrium point of the closed-loop system. These results are illustrated with some simple examples. The paper concludes by briefly discussing the prospects for adding performance criteria.