Repetitive Control Systems: Stability and Periodic Tracking beyond the Linear Case

Periodic output regulation studies the problem of steering the output of a dynamical system along a periodic reference. This is a fundamental control problem which has a great interest from a practical point of view, since most industrial activities oriented to production are based on tasks with a cyclic nature. Nevertheless this interest extends rapidly to a theoretical framework once the problem is formalized. Mathematical tools coming from different fields can be used to provide an insight to the output regulation problem in different ways. An important control technique that is classically used to achieve periodic out- put regulation si called Repetitive Control (RC) and this thesis focuses on (but is not limited to) the development and the analysis with novel tools of RC schemes. Periodic output regulation for nonlinear dynamical systems is a challenging topic. This thesis, besides of providing consistent and practically useful results in the linear case, introduces promising tools dealing with the nonlinear periodic output regulation problem, whose solution is presented for particular classes of systems. The contribution of this research is mainly theoretical and relies on the use of mathematical tools like infinite-dimensional port-Hamiltonian systems and autonomous discrete-time systems to study stability and tracking properties in RC schemes and periodic regulation in general. Differently from the classical continuous-time formulation of RC, internal model arguments are not directly used is this work to study asymptotic tracking. In this way the linear case can be reinterpreted under a new light and novel strategies to consistently attack the nonlinear case are presented. Furthermore an application-oriented chapter with experimental results is present which describes the possibility of implementing a discrete-time RC scheme involving trajectory generation and non-minimum phase systems.