Introduction

This chapter presents an introduction to reset control systems. The chapter pursues two objectives: The first one is to give a quick and simple description of what a reset control is, and provide basic explanations on why and when it is convenient to use this strategy. This objective is covered by the first two sections and is summarized in this key idea: a reset control is a simple nonlinear control technique very effective for linear plants subject to fundamental design limitations. The second objective of the chapter is to give a brief survey on the literature on analysis and design of reset control systems. The historical perspective begins with the early ideas on reset control, including the popular Clegg integrator and the first-order-reset-element (FORE) by Horowitz and coworkers. The following section presents the first series of rigorous results on analysis and design of reset controllers using a state-space description, and including full reset and partial reset compensators. The next section deals with the relations between reset control and the wider field of impulsive control, from different points of view. The next two sections cover new formalizations of reset control within the field of hybrid systems, including several recent approaches to reset control. © Springer-Verlag London Limited 2012.