Switch-Time-Aware Hybrid Model Predictive Control Using the Hybrid Minimum Principle
Organizations: School of Manufacturing Systems and Networks, Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering, Arizona State University, Mesa, AZ, 85212, USA.
Abstract
This article presents a time-aware hybrid model predictive control (MPC) framework that simultaneously optimizes the objective with respect to both continuous control inputs and event switching times. Rather than relying on a fixed time grid, the switching instant is lifted into the decision vector and treated as an explicit optimization variable. The resulting transcription is a smooth nonlinear program whose Karush-Kuhn-Tucker (KKT) conditions are consistent with the Hybrid Minimum Principle (HMP) event-time stationarity condition, so first-order hybrid sensitivities are recovered implicitly through the KKT system rather than by evaluating saltation matrices. Each MPC step solves a single sparse Quadratic Program (QP), jointly optimizing control inputs and impact timing in real time. On a bouncing mass landing on an oscillating platform, the method attaches in half the time of fixed-grid saltation MPC, reduces cumulative control effort by 30%, and removes the post-impact rebounds, at a 15% increase in per-cycle solve time. It matches the cumulative effort of offline time-aware solvers to within 4% while running at 2.4 ms per cycle against 281 ms for a complementarity-based formulation of the same problem, of which a 10.6x reduction is attributable to the transcription alone at a fixed solver.
Figures & tables
| Method / solver | Attach (s) | Impacts | Cum. effort | Solve time (ms) | Worst (ms) | Rel. cost | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Saltation MPC (OSQP) | Performance | 6.35 | 6 | 15.2 | Computation | 2.11 0.07 | 2.26 | 0.9 |
| HMP-MPC (OSQP) | 3.20 | 4 | 10.7 | 2.43 0.14 | 2.72 | 1.0 | ||
| HMP-MPC (IPOPT) | 3.25 | 4 | 11.4 | 26.6 9.7 | 35.3 | 11 | ||
| Time-aware MPCC (IPOPT) | 2.10 | 2 | 10.3 | 281 136 | 554 | 116 | ||
| Contact MIQP (Bonmin) | 2.05 | 5 | 10.6 | 22 800 8 600 | 30 400 | 9383 |
| Saltation MPC | HMP-MPC | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| exact | mism. | exact | mism. | ||||
| 100 | 100 | 100 | 100 | ||||
| 95 | 95 | 100 | 100 | ||||
| 65 | 62 | 100 | 98 | ||||
| 68 | 42 | 98 | 95 | ||||
Model Predictive Control
Model Predictive Control optimizes future actions with a system model, repeatedly applying the first action as new information arrives.
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