Optimization for Control, Observation and Safety

Book excerpt: Mathematical optimization is the selection of the best element in a set with respect to a given criterion. Optimization has become one of the most used tools in control theory to compute control laws, adjust parameters (tuning), estimate states, fit model parameters, find conditions in order to fulfill a given closed-loop property, among others. Optimization also plays an important role in the design of fault detection and isolation systems to prevent safety hazards and production losses that require the detection and identification of faults, as early as possible to minimize their impacts by implementing real-time fault detection and fault-tolerant systems. Recently, it has been proven that many optimization problems with convex objective functions and linear matrix inequality (LMI) constraints can be solved easily and efficiently using existing software, which increases the flexibility and applicability of the control algorithms. Therefore, real-world control systems need to comply with several conditions and constraints that have to be taken into account in the problem formulation, which represents a challenge in the application of the optimization algorithms. This book offers an overview of the state-of-the-art of the most advanced optimization techniques and their applications in control engineering.