The aim of this project is the development of a novel framework to face new control problems that arise when dealing with remotely controlled systems. Typically, in these systems, the plant and controller are a considerable distance apart so control signals are required to travel through a network to communicate both devices (Networked Control Systems or NCS). The principal advantages of NCS are wire reduction, simplicity in diagnosis and maintenance of the system, increase of flexibility, etc. The insertion of a communication network in a closed loop feedback controlled system greatly complicates analysis and design of a NCS. Interaction between the transmission of information and the controlled system can be set up with wired or wireless links. In both cases, the communication channel has a substantial impact in the closed loop performance of the system.

In this project, it is intended to develop a unified methodology to deal with both control and communication in NCS, taking explicitly into account all elements involved in the closed loop system (Plant, Controller, Quantizer properties, sampling period, coding/decoding alphabet length and network bandwidth). These components, including the control law, must be designed to optimize performance and the overall stability of the controlled system, considering capacity restrictions of the communication channel and the quality of the send/receive protocols of transmission.

With this intention, analysis and design technologies based on robust control in the context NCS will be applied. In a first stage, linear strategies based on the well known Hinfinity technique will be investigated. In a second stage, non linear counterpart of these methodologies (Hinfinity /H2) will be also explored.

To validate the developed control techniques and test control limits, two test platforms will be used. On the one hand, a two degrees of freedom robot controlled by means of wired network, and on the other hand, a self stabilized mobile vehicle that resembles an inverted pendulum controlled by a wireless network.