MPC on a chip - Recent advances on the application of multi-parametric model-based control

Multi-parametric model-based control (mp-MPC) is a control method that is widely acknowledged for its ability to solve the on-line optimisation problem, involved in traditional MPC, off-line via parametric optimisation. Its main advantage is that it obtains the control actions as explicit functions of the plant measurements. This allows for the control actions to be obtained on-line via simple function evaluations instead of solving repetitively a computationally demanding on-line optimisation. This allows mp-MPC to be implemented on the simplest, low-cost hardware. In this paper we report on recent developments on industrial and experimental applications of mp-MPC where the ability of mp-MPC to be applied on systems with fast dynamics and sampling times is demonstrated, which maybe prohibitive for traditional MPC that relies on on-line optimisation methods. (C) 2007 Published by Elsevier Ltd.