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Abstract—This paper is concerned with the design of a novel controller has the benefits of the adaptive strategy, while also
adaptive controller, namely the linear quadratic new extended matching the performance of the well known LQ regulator.
minimal control synthesis with integral action (LQ-NEMCSI).
We found this novel approach particularly feasible to the con-
We present for the first time the analytical proof of asymptotic
stability of the controller and experimental evidence of the algo- trol of an electronic throttle body (ETB). The ETB is a mecha-
rithm effectiveness for controlling an electronic throttle body: an tronic device dedicated to the regulation of the air mass flow
element of any drive-by-wire system in automotive engineering, rate. In this system a shaped body duct regulates the relation-
affected by many nonlinear perturbations. ship between the angular position of the throttle valve and the
Index Terms—Adaptive control, automotive control, mecha- incoming air flow into the manifold. The desired plate position
tronic, nonlinear control, piecewise smooth systems. is imposed by a microcomputer in a drive-by-wire configuration
(see, for example, [6] and [7]).
I. INTRODUCTION From the control perspective, the ETB is a highly nonlinear
and uncertain plant, since the transmission friction and the
II. BACKGROUND
The MCS algorithm was first introduced in [5] as an exten-
sion of the Landau model reference adaptive scheme [20]. It re-
lies on minimal knowledge of the plant dynamics. Namely, it is
assumed that the controlled system (plant) is controllable and it
has unknown parameters but a known phase canonical structure,
as
(1)
where , and
(4a) (8)
(10)
(19)
where is defined as in (3), whereas the two additional
terms are (20)
(21)
(11) (22)
(12) (23)
with The error dynamics (17) can be seen as a nonlinear system with
a linear feedforward block and a nonlinear feedback block ac-
(13) cording with the block scheme in Fig. 2.
being the output matrix of the plant and the output error as
in (5). Notice that the weight has to be a positive scalar con- (24)
stant such as the weights and in the classical MCS. Further-
more, the additional adaptive gains and are initialized Since the dynamical system (24) has got a linear structure, to
to zero ( and ), such as prove its passivity it is sufficient to choose a positive definite
the standard gains and . We wish to emphasize that the quadratic storage function such as
resulting control law (10) is composed of both continuous (3),
(11), and discontinuous (12) actions. with (25)
A. Proof of Asymptotic Stability Using (7), (5), (6b), and (18), the time derivative of the storage
function can be now computed as
Asymptotic stability of the LQ-NEMCSI algorithm is proven
using to the passivity theorem of Desoer and Vidyasagar [26]. (26)
The evolution of the tracking error defined as in (6a) can be
derived from the plant and model reference dynamics in (1) and
as the matrix is positive definite. In so doing, passivity of
(2) under the switching control action in (10), as
the feedforward system is proven [27]. Notice that, since
is asymptotically stable according to the classical theory on LQ
control theory, the Lyapunov (7) always has a solution [1].
(16)
C. Passivity of the Feedback Dynamics
where models rapidly varying dis-
turbances and unmodelled nonlinear perturbations acting on the To prove that the feedback block will only ever produce a
plant. We remark that the matrix is the closed-loop dynamic finite amount of energy, the Popov’s inequality must be satisfied.
matrix of the LTI reference model (8) under the action of the LQ Specifically, the following integral inequality must hold [26]:
strategy. After simple algebraic manipulations, given the canon-
ical form of matrices and , we can rewrite (16) as (27)
where
(29)
(30)
(31)
with
(32) Fig. 3. (a) Picture of motorized throttle body (DV-E5, Bosch). (b) Schematic
of the electronic throttle body.
where the integral and proportional adaptive components are,
respectively
with the inequality (35). In so doing, passivity of the feedback
(33) path is proven.
Remarks:
Thus, by using the above expressions, in (29) can be decom- • For any time instant the bounded input-output prop-
posed as erty of the feedback passive systems guarantees bounded-
ness of the error dynamics [21].
• The convergence of the adaptive gain to a finite value
in the absence of persistent perturbations can be easily
shown by following the approach in [25]. In practice,
might keep growing if persistent disturbances are present.
In this case, a simple implementation solution is to lock the
evolution of over a certain threshold.
which is greater than a negative definite constant. The ETB [see Fig. 3(a)] is a mechatronic device dedicated to
Consider now the term (30), where . We the regulation of the air mass flow rate of an internal combus-
have now to prove that tion engine. It is located between the air filter box and the in-
take manifold. When the throttle plate opens an airflow sensor
detects this change and communicates it to the electronic con-
(35)
trol unit (ECU). As a consequence, ECU varies the amount of
injected fuel in order to maintain the desired air-fuel ratio.
This is verified if , and this The reference signal is the solution of a trade off between
is trivially satisfied if the driver request (acceleration pedal position) and the effec-
tive traction possibilities depending upon driveability, safety
(36) and emission constraints. The control signal generated by the
ECU becomes, by means of an H-bridge power converter, the
From the definition of the adaptation law for the in (15), armature voltage of a dc-motor. The rotation motion is then
it is apparent that the gain evolution is monotonously increasing. transferred from the motor shaft to the plate shaft through a gear
Thus, for any given constant value , there always exists a system. A schematic of the ETB is shown in Fig. 3(b). Despite
finite time instant, say , such that for all . If its apparent simplicity, the system behavior is affected by many
we now set and , we can conclude that, nonlinearities which can dramatically alter its dynamics. They
for all , the passivity condition (36) is verified together can be briefly summarized as follows.
DI BERNARDO et al.: SYNTHESIS AND EXPERIMENTAL VALIDATION OF THE NOVEL LQ-NEMCSI ADAPTIVE STRATEGY 1329
Fig. 4. Experimental stick and slip phenomena: armature voltage (dashed line)
Fig. 5. Experimental hysteresis phenomenon: experimental data from the plant
and plate position (solid line). Notice that, for the comparison of the time history
(dotted line) and average data (solid line).
of both the variables on the same plot, the armature voltage is multiplied by 10).
A. Experimental Nonlinear Behavior Fig. 6. Experimental phase plot showing the hunting phenomenon under a PI
control action (the integral gain is 0.05, the proportional gain is 0.1 and reference
Using the setup described in appendix A, it has been possible signal is 45 [deg]).
to capture and confirm experimentally the nonlinear behavior
exhibited by the throttle body.
A notable consequence of friction is the presence of stick-slip is known in the literature as hunting [11], [30], [31]. Experi-
behavior. When this kind of unwanted dynamics appear, rigid mental results show that this is an important nonlinear phenom-
body elements alternatively stick and slip with respect to each enon since the controlled angular plate position exhibits an un-
other. wanted limit cycle in the presence of a constant reference signal
The experimental stick-slip oscillations exhibited by the (see Fig. 6).
throttle valve are shown in Fig. 4 under an open-loop slowly Notice that, since tuning of the controller is a crucial aspect
varying armature voltage. of the design, an adaptive strategy is worthwhile exploring.
The combined action of friction and spring torques causes an
hysteretic behavior in the system response (see Fig. 5) [11], [29]. B. Performances of the ETB via Classical Controller
When the throttle body dynamics are controlled via the feed- In this section, we experimentally investigate the perfor-
back of the angular position of the plate, other relevant nonlinear mance achievable via a properly tuned PI controller equipped
effects appear. For instance, it is well known that in systems with with a model based feed-forward action for the compensation
friction under an integral control action (like PID controller), of nonlinear dynamics. A filter is added on the reference signal
an equilibrium (set point) can be easily transformed into a limit to limit the tracking error during rapid tip-in/tip-out maneuvers.
cycle when the parameters change. This undesired phenomenon Further details on control design can be found in [32].
1330 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 18, NO. 6, NOVEMBER 2010
A. Control Specifications
The achievable control specifications obviously depend
on the admissible performance of the adopted hardware (see
Appendix A). Essentially they are related to requirements on
the system dynamic response and they are set as follows:
1) the settling time is required to be 130 [ms] for a valve
opening [7] (notice that the settling time is defined as the
minimum time after which the throttle plate angle remains
within 5% of its steady-state value);
2) no overshoot should be present in the step response (fur-
thermore, the throttle plate shall never hit the mechanical
end-stroke);
3) the maximum value of the steady state tracking error is set
to be 0.1 [deg] [9];
4) the maximum absolute dynamic error should be 7 [deg] [7].
Furthermore the control system should be robust to variations
of the process parameters, and the controller synthesis should
be simple and automated as much as possible [15].
(37)
(38)
where is a sufficiently small positive constant to be ap- Fig. 8. Experimental results. Square wave with period 4 [s] and amplitude 50
propriately chosen. [deg]. Angular plate position: plate position reference (dashdotted blue line);
2) A smooth trajectory reference (STR) first-order filter is plate position reference model to be tracked (dashed red line); plate
position (solid black line). (a) begin of the manoeuvre t 2 [20; 33] [s]; (b) end
introduced both to limit the tracking error during tip-in/ of the manoeuvre t 2 [113:5; 126:5] [s].
tip-out conditions and to reduce the unavoidable noise on
the external reference [7].
3) As the velocity of the plate is not available, a proper deriva- VI. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
tive filter has to be used to reconstruct the plate velocity. The proposed adaptive LQ-NEMCSI controller has been
In so doing, unavoidable noise and delays are introduced widely tested over a long reference signal of the throttle po-
in the closed-loop system along the velocity channel wors- sition composed by a mixed sequence of canonical signals,
ening the overall performances. A way to overcome this comprising square, sinusoidal, and step functions as well as
problem is to use state observers for the velocity estima- free driver commands.
tion according with some approaches that can be found in To illustrate the effects of the gain adaptation on the tracking
the ETB literature (see, for example, [16], [19], [28], [33]). error, we show in Fig. 8(a) and (b) the reference position and
Since one of the most strict industrial requirements is the the valve position close to the beginning of the test and after
reduction of the processing time and memory needed for about 100 [s]. We can clearly see that, as time increases, the
the implementation of controllers on an ECU [15], here we control gains evolve causing a better and better tracking of the
test the control scheme assuming in (4a) equal to zero, reference model state. Specifically, the undershoot present at
removing in this way the need for an online estimation of the beginning of the maneuver disappears as the controller gain
the angular velocity. The experimental results confirm that adapt.
such an “unorthodox” choice does not affect the overall We present next a set of wide opening manoeuvres where
performance of the controller. the valve is required to open and close over a position range
4) As it usually happens when implementing the MCS of about 70 [deg]. This is a particularly challenging problem
strategy [21], the scalar quantities and which modu- as the restoring force is, in practice, characterized by different
late the adaptive gains in (4a) and (4c), have to be chosen elastic coefficients depending on the actual position of the plate
heuristically as a trade off between convergence time and (see Appendix B). Despite the lack of any explicit modelling
reactivity of the control action. Our choice for the weights of such spring behavior, experiments confirm that the adaptive
of the adaptive strategy is , , , controller does indeed guarantee good tracking performance in
and . these operating conditions, as shown in Fig. 9. Note that the
5) Locking of the adaptive gains was implemented in the mi- maximum transient error is below 7 [deg] as required and goes
crocontroller. In particular, the adaptive gain is frozen down to less than 0.1 [deg] at steady-state. The corresponding
when it exceeds 25% of the maximum allowable voltage control signal and gain evolution are within the acceptable ex-
value, i.e., battery voltage. perimental bounds.
1332 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 18, NO. 6, NOVEMBER 2010
Fig. 9. Experimental results. Square wave with period 4 [s] and amplitude Fig. 10. Experimental results. Sinusoidal wave with period 4 [s] and ampli-
70 [deg]. (a) Angular plate position: plate position reference (dashdotted
tude 5 [deg]. (a) Angular plate position: plate position reference (dashdotted
blue line); plate position reference model to be tracked (dashed red line); blue line); plate position reference model to be tracked (dashed red line);
plate position (solid black line). (b) Position tracking error. (c) Controller plate position (solid black line). (b) Position tracking error. (c) Controller
adaptive gains:K K
(solid line), (dashed-dotted line). (d) Controller output adaptive gains: K K
(solid line), (dashed-dotted line). (d) Controller output
voltage. voltage.
We move now to the case of small amplitude reference signals. scheme copes effectively with such unwanted nonlinear perturba-
In this scenario the presence of stick-slip motion due to friction tions (which again are not modelled explicitly for control system
becomes particularly relevant as the position and velocity vari- design). Similar results were obtained for different small ampli-
ations are relatively low. As shown in Fig. 10 our novel control tude signals and are not reported here for the sake of brevity.
DI BERNARDO et al.: SYNTHESIS AND EXPERIMENTAL VALIDATION OF THE NOVEL LQ-NEMCSI ADAPTIVE STRATEGY 1333
Fig. 12. Experimental results. Sequence of steps. (a) Angular plate position:
plate position reference (dashdotted blue line); plate position reference
model to be tracked (dashed red line); plate position (solid black line).
Fig. 11. Experimental results. Free driver command. (a) Angular plate posi-
tion: plate position reference (dashdotted blue line); plate position ref-
(b) Position tracking error. (c) Controller adaptive gains: K K
(solid line),
(dashed-dotted line). (d) Controller output voltage.
erence model to be tracked (dashed red line); plate position (solid black
line). (b) Position tracking error. (c) Controller adaptive gains: K (solid line),
K (dashed-dotted line). (d) Controller output voltage.
that excellent tracking performance is achieved when more
Further validation of the controller was carried out on a realistic free driver commands are chosen as reference signals.
set of free manoeuvres as shown in Fig. 11. We observe In particular, for the manoeuvre Fig. 11(a) details on the
1334 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 18, NO. 6, NOVEMBER 2010
evolution of absolute tracking error, adaptive gains and control position sensors; 3) a battery voltage sensor; 4) an H-bridge
action are traced in Fig. 11(b)–(d), respectively. The tracking power circuit (to drive the DC motor); 5) an Hall effect current
error during all the manoeuvre is less than the one prescribed sensor (LTA 50P/SP1, LEM); 6) signal conditioning circuits;
by automotive requirements (7 [deg]) remaining lower than 7) a station for rapid control prototyping (RCP).
about 2.6 [deg]. The open-loop response of the ETB plant can be summarized
Finally, we consider the case of a multistep reference signal through two characteristic times. Namely, the time necessary
applied to the valve towards the end of the control horizon. to open wide the valve under a battery voltage step (
Such signal is shown in Fig. 12. Here, again the LQ-NEMCSI 12 [V]) 100 [ms], and the current-less return time,
controller guarantees satisfactory performance over the entire namely the time necessary to close the valve in free evolution
manoeuvre. 350 [ms].
All the validation tests described above confirm that indeed The RCP is a dSPACE-based Multiprocessor System
the new adaptive control scheme presented in this paper is a vi-
equipped with the DS1003 (DSP TMS320C40, 60 Mflops)
able and effective strategy to be implemented experimentally
and DS1004 (DEC Alpha AXP 21164, 600 Mflops) processor
showing excellent performance when applied to the ETB setup
boards. An analog DS2201 (20 ch., 12 bit, 30 kHz) and a
of interest. Note that for the sake of brevity, we omit the evolu-
tion of the adaptive gains and determining the amplitude digital DS4002 (8 ch. CAP/CMP res. 30 bit/200 ns, freq.
of the integral and switching actions in the LQ-NEMCSI con- max. 833 kHz) board allow the I/O handling. The DSP is
troller for all the experimental tests which have been reported. In programmed in MATLAB/Simulink (MathWorks) environment
general, we observe the switching action to have small bounded [34] and the experiments are managed and instrumented by a
amplitude and similarly for the integral action. ControlDesk application [35]. Furthermore, an oscilloscope
It is worth mentioning here that performing a long ma- (TDS-3014, Tektronix) is used to perform high frequency
noeuvre can be useful to implement an automatic procedure measurements.
for the tuning of the controller gains. Namely, the gains could Note that, using the hardware described above, the execution
be set to the final steady-state values obtained at the end of of our control task is performed in 10 [ s] with a sample time
the manoeuvre and then adapted about those values to cope of 1 [ms].
with uncertainties and external disturbances. Despite not being
a requirement of the algorithm we presented in the paper, APPENDIX B
this might represent a practical low-cost alternative to more MATHEMATICAL MODEL OF THE THROTTLE BODY
classical gain tuning schemes.
The ETB plant (shown in Fig. 3) mainly consists of a dc
VII. CONCLUSION motor, a reduction gear and a plate where the springs necessary
to lead the plate in the limp-home position are also located.
We have presented the synthesis and validation of a novel The mathematical model of the plant can be constructed
class of adaptive controllers, the LQ-NEMCSI. The main fea- starting from the simple models that describe each part of the
tures of these controllers are to require minimal knowledge of system and then considering the interaction between them. The
the plant and to be robust to nonlinear perturbations by means overall model can then be derived as (see [36] for details on the
of an adaptively estimated switching action. The controller is model derivation)
based on the family of MCS model reference adaptive con-
trollers. The idea is to use an optimally controlled reference
model and implement the control action onto the plant by means (39)
of an adaptive controller consisting of state feedback and feed-
forward actions enhanced by means of a switching action and
an integral action. Analytical proof of asymptotic stability was
where, given the minimum and the maximum allowed angles,
given. Then, the controller was validated experimentally on a
respectively and , [deg] is the plate
highly nonlinear plant of relevance in applications, the ETB.
position; [deg/s] is the velocity of the plate; is the current
The experimental validation confirms the effectiveness of the
across the coil of the armature; [V] is the
novel scheme to achieve the desired performance in a number
voltage source across the coil of the armature (being the
of different situations.
battery voltage); [H] is the equivalent inductance of the ar-
Note that the control design and validation reported in this
mature coil; [ ] is the equivalent resistance of the armature
paper strongly indicates the feasibility of the new control
coil; [Vs/rad] is the velocity constant determined by the flux
strategy we presented for the control of ETB and other non-
of the permanent magnets; [Nm/A] is the torque constant;
linear plants in commercial applications. Future work will
[Kgm ] is the equivalent moment of inertia; is the transmis-
address this issue.
sion ratio due to the gear; [Nm] is the torque due to the pres-
ence of the springs which gives the restoring torque; [Nm]
APPENDIX A represents all friction torques. Parameter values for our experi-
EXPERIMENTAL SETUP mental setup are reported in Table I.
The experimental setup consists of: 1) an ETB (DV-E5, Nonlinear Restoring Torque and Friction: The elastic
Bosch), embedding a dc motor; 2) two dual resistive angular torque in (39), is not simply a linear function of all the
DI BERNARDO et al.: SYNTHESIS AND EXPERIMENTAL VALIDATION OF THE NOVEL LQ-NEMCSI ADAPTIVE STRATEGY 1335
TABLE I
ETB MODEL PARAMETERS
if
if
(40)
if
if
(41a)
(41b)
(41c)
(50)
where
(51)
(52)
Fig. 14. Nonlinear term of the friction torque based on identified plant param-
eters. with
(53)
Now we rewrite the spring torque as
where and
(44) . Note that, since the parameter uncertainties
if , and the values of the physical parameter are bounded, the
function is also be bounded as required in [25].
if
(45)
if ,
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[14] M. Vašak, M. Baoti, M. Morari, I. Petrovic, and N. Peric, “Constrained Mario di Bernardo (S’06) received the Ph.D. degree
optimal control of an electronic throttle,” Int. J. Control, vol. 79, no. 5, in engineering mathematics from the University of
pp. 465–478, May 2006. Bristol, Bristol, U.K., in 1998.
[15] M. Vašak, M. Baoti, I. Petrovic, and N. Peric, “Hybrid theory-based He is currently an Associate Professor with the
time-optimal control of an electronic throttle,” IEEE Trans. Ind. Elec- Department of Automatic Control, University of
tron., vol. 54, no. 3, pp. 1483–1494, May/Jun. 2007. Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy. He was appointed
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estimation and hybrid theory based optimal control,” in Proc. IEEE Int. Mathematics, University of Bristol, in 1997, and then
Symp. Ind. Electron., Ajaccio, France, May 2004, vol. 1, pp. 323–328. promoted to a Readership and a Full Professorship.
[17] M. Yokoyama, K. Shimizu, and N. Okamoto, “Application of From 2001 to 2003, he was an Assistant Professor
sliding-mode servo controllers to electronic throttle control,” in Proc. with the Department of Automatic Control, Univer-
37th IEEE Conf. Decision Control, Tampa, FL, Dec. 1998, vol. 2, pp. sity of Sannio, Sannio, Italy. His research interests include the broad area of
1541–1545. nonlinear systems, on both dynamics and control. He authored and coauthored
[18] Y. Pan, O. Dagci, and U. Ozguner, “Variable structure control of elec- more than 150 international scientific publications.
tronic throttle valve,” in Proc. IEEE Veh. Electron. Conf., Tottori, Japan, Dr. Bernardo is currently Associate Editor of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON
Sep. 2001, pp. 103–108. CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS—I: REGULAR PAPERS. He is a member of the orga-
[19] U. Ozguner, S. Hong, and Y. Pan, “Discrete-time sliding mode control nizing committees of the IEEE Symposia on Circuits and Systems and has been
of electronic throttle valve,” in Proc. IEEE 40th Conf. Decision Con- chair or co-chair of many scientific events. In 2004, he was elected to the gov-
trol, Orlando, FL, Dec. 2001, vol. 2, pp. 1819–1824. erning board of the Italian Society for Chaos and Complexity and in 2006 and
[20] I. D. Landau, Adaptive Control: The Model Reference Approach. 2009 to the Board of Governors of the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society. He re-
New York: Marcel-Dekker, 1979. ceived funding from major funding bodies and industries including the EPSRC,
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synthesis algorithm,” Int. J. Control, pp. 850–861, 1990. gineering Centre, QinetiQ. On the 28th February 2007, he was honoured with
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synthesis algorithm to the control and synchronisation of chaotic sys- for scientific merits by the President of the Italian Republic.
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[23] D. Stoten and H. Benchoubane, “The extended minimal controller syn-
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1992. Alessandro di Gaeta received the “Laurea” degree
[24] D. Stoten, “The adaptive minimal control synthesis algorithm with in- (M.Sc.) in computer science engineering and the
tegral action,” in Proc. IEEE 21st Int. Conf. Ind. Electron., Control In- Ph.D. degree in automatic control from the Univer-
strum., Orlando, FL, 1995, vol. 2, pp. 1646–1651. sity of Naples “Federico II”, Naples, Italy, in 1999
[25] M. di Bernardo and D. Stoten, “A new extended minimal control syn- and 2002, respectively.
thesis algorithm with an application to the control of chaotic systems,” Since 2003, he has been a Researcher with the
in Proc. Conf. Decision Control, San Diego, CA, 1997, vol. 2, pp. Istituto Motori of the National Research Council of
1902–1907. Italy, Naples, Italy, where he is presently with the
[26] C. A. Desor and M. Vidyasagar, Feedback System: Input-Output Prop- High Efficiency Spark Ignition Engines Division.
erties. New York: Academic, 1975. His research interests include modeling and control
[27] R. Lozano, B. Brogliato, O. Egeland, and B. Maschke, Dissipative of internal combustion engines and of mechatronic
Systems Analysis and Control: Theory and Applications, 2nd ed. systems.
London, U.K.: Springer, 2006.
[28] M. Vasak, I. Petrovic, and N. Peric, “State estimation of an elec-
tronic throttle body,” in Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. Ind. Technol., Maribor,
Slovenia, Dec. 2003, vol. 1, pp. 472–477. Umberto Montanaro received the “Laurea” degree
[29] A. F. Contreras, I. P. Quiroz, and C. C. de Witt, “Further results (M.Sc.) in computer science engineering and the
on modelling and identification of an electronic throttle body,” in Ph.D. degree in automatic control from the Univer-
Proc. 10th Med. Conf. Control Autom. (MED), Lisbon, Portugal, sity of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy, in 2005 and
Jul. 2002. 2009, respectively.
[30] B. Armstrong-Helouvry, P. Dupont, and C. C. de Witt, “A survey of His research interests include the modeling of non-
models, analysis tools and compensation methods for the control of smooth systems, adaptive, and switching control.
machines with friction,” Automatica, vol. 30, no. 7, pp. 1083–1138,
Jul. 1994.
[31] R. H. A. Hensen, “Controlled mechanical systems with friction,”
Ph.D. dissertation, Dept. Mechan. Eng., Eindhoven Univ. Technol.,
Eindoven, The Netherlands, 2002.
[32] M. di Bernardo, A. di Gaeta, U. Montanaro, and S. Santini, “A com-
parative study of the new lq-mcs control on an automotive electro-me-
chanical system,” in Proc. IEEE Int. Symp. Circuits Syst., Seattle, WA, Stefania Santini received the “Laurea” degree
May 2008, pp. 552–555. (M.Sc.) in control engineering and the Ph.D. degree in
[33] A. Kitahara, A. Sato, M. Hoshino, N. Kurihara, and S. Shin, “LQG automatic control from the University of Naples Fed-
based electronic throttle control with a two degree of freedom struc- erico II, Naples, Italy, in 1996 and 1999, respectively.
ture,” in Proc. 35th Conf. Decision Control, Dec. 1996, vol. 2, pp. In 1999, she was a Visiting Researcher with
1785–1788. the Measurement and Control Laboratory (ETH
[34] dSPACE GmbH, “RTI and RTI-MP implementation guide for release Zuerich), Svizzera. In 2001, she became Assistant
3.5,” 2003. Professor of Automatic Control with the Department
[35] dSPACE GmbH, “Control desk experiment guide for release 3.5,” of Systems and Computer Engineering, University
2003. of Naples Federico II. Her current research interests
[36] A. di Gaeta, U. Montanaro, S. Santini, and M. di Bernardo, include the analysis and control of nonsmooth
“Modeling and identification of an electronic throttle body,” Isti- dynamical systems and automotive control.
tuto Motori, National Research Council, Naples, Italy, Tech. Rep. Dr. Santini is a member of the Technical Committee on Automotive Controls
2009RR1887, 2009. of the IEEE Control System Society.