Advances in Robust Fractional Control

This monograph presents design methodologies for (robust) fractional control systems. It shows the reader how to take advantage of the superior flexibility of fractional control systems compared with integer-order systems in achieving more challenging control requirements. There is a high degree of current interest in fractional systems and fractional control arising from both academia and industry and readers from both milieux are catered to in the text. Different design approaches having in common a trade-off between robustness and performance of the control system are considered explicitly. The text generalizes methodologies, techniques and theoretical results that have been successfully applied in classical (integer) control to the fractional case.

The first part of Advances in Robust Fractional Control is the more industrially oriented. It focuses on the design of fractional controllers for integer processes. In particular, it considers fractional-order proportional-integral-derivative controllers, because integer-order PID regulators are, undoubtedly, the controllers most frequently adopted in industry.

The second part of the book deals with a more general approach to fractional control systems, extending techniques (such as H-infinity optimal control and optimal input‒output inversion based control) originally devised for classical integer-order control.

Advances in Robust Fractional Control will be a useful reference for the large number of academic researchers in fractional control, for their industrial counterparts and for graduate students who want to learn more about this subject.

Fabrizio Padula was born in Brescia (Italy) in 1984. He received the MSc (Laurea Specialistica) degree in Industrial Automation Engineering cum laude from the University of Brescia discussing a thesis entitled “Real time path planning strategies for manipulator robots”, developed in collaboration with the HANDLE European project at the Laboratoire d’Electronique et Electromagnetisme of the Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris. During 2011 he spent a period at Departament de Telecomunicació i Enginyeria de Sistemes, of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Bellaterra (Spain), working on robust control techniques for fractional systems. He received the Ph.D. degree in Computer Science and Control Engineering with the Doctor Europaeus mention in 2013, discussing a thesis entitled “Design methodologies for fractional control systems”. He is currently research fellow in the Control Systems research group of the University of Brescia. His research focuses on industrial control, fractional control, dynamic inversion based regulation, H-infinity control and robot motion planning.
Antonio Visioli received the Laurea degree in electronic engineering from the University of Parma, Parma, Italy, and the Ph.D. degree in applied mechanics from the University of Brescia, Brescia, Italy, in 1995 and 1999 respectively. From 1997 to 2005 he has been assistant professor and from 2005 he is associate professor of Automatic Control at the University of Brescia, Italy. His research interests include industrial robot control and trajectory planning, input-output-inversion-based control and process control. In particular, industrial (PID) control and robust control have been always one of the main subjects of his research, as shown by a large number of publications in refereed journals and conference proceedings. Overall, he is the author or co-author of two monographs, one edited book, one international textbook and more than 170 papers in international journals and refereed conference proceedings. He cooperates with different companies and universities. Dr. Visioli is senior member of IEEE, member of IFAC and member of the national board of Anipla (Italian Association for the Automation).