Filtered Repetitive Control with Nonlinear Systems: An Actuator-Focused Design Method

The internal model principle (IMP) was first proposed by Francis and Wonham [2, 3]. It states that if any exogenous signal can be regarded as the output of an autonomous system, then the inclusion of this signal model, namely, internal model, in a stable closed-loop system can assure asymptotic tracking or asymptotic rejection of the signal. Until now, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, there exist at least two viewpoints on IMP. In the early years, for linear time-invariant (LTI) systems, IMP implies that the internal model is to supply closed-loop transmission zeros which cancel the unstable poles of the disturbances and reference signals. This is called cancelation viewpoint here and only works for problems able to be formulated in terms of transfer functions. In the mid-1970s, Francis and Wonham proposed the geometric approach [4] to design an internal model controller [2, 3]. The purpose of internal models is to construct an invariant subspace for the closed-loop system and make the regulated output zero at each point of the invariant subspace. This is called geometrical viewpoint here.