Design of Symbolic Controllers for Networked Control Systems

Networked control systems (NCSs) are distributed systems where plants, sensors, actuators, and controllers communicate over shared networks. Nonideal behaviors of the communication network include variable sampling/transmission intervals and communication delays, packet losses, communication constraints, and quantization errors. NCSs have been the object of intensive study in the last few years. However, due to the inherent complexity of NCSs, the current literature focuses on a subset of these nonidealities and mostly considers stability and stabilizability problems. Recent technology advances need different and more complex control objectives to be considered. In this paper, we present first a general model of NCS, including most relevant nonidealities of the communication network; then, we propose a symbolic model approach to the control design with objectives expressed in terms of nondeterministic transition systems. The presented results are based on recent advances in symbolic control design of continuous and hybrid systems. An example in the context of robot motion planning with remote control is included, showing the effectiveness of the proposed approach.