Many tracking control solutions proposed in the literature rely on various forms of tracking error signals at the expense of possibly overlooking other dynamic criteria, such as optimizing the control effort, overshoot, and settling time, for example. In this article, a model-free control architectural framework is presented to track reference signals while optimizing other criteria as per the designer’s preference. The control architecture is model-free in the sense that the plant’s dynamics do not have to be known in advance. To this end, we propose and compare four tracking control algorithms which synergistically integrate a few machine learning tools to compromise between tracking a reference signal and optimizing a user-defined dynamic cost function. This is accomplished via two orchestrated control loops, one for tracking and one for optimization. Two control algorithms are designed and compared for the tracking loop. The first is based on reinforcement learning while the second is based on nonlinear threshold accepting technique. The optimization control loop is implemented using an artificial neural network. Each controller is trained offline before being integrated in the aggregate control system. Simulation results of three scenarios with various complexities demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed control schemes in forcing the tracking error to converge while minimizing a pre-defined system-wide objective function.
Virtual Reference Feedback Tuning of Model-Free Control Algorithms for Servo Systems
