Event-triggered Control Systems: Basics and Recent Advances

In recent years, the control theory and automation science communities have witnessed significant advances in the field of networked control systems, where communication between sensors, actuators, and controllers occurs over a shared digital communication network. In networked control systems, the efficient utilization of communication resources has become a critical issue due to limitations such as the restricted communication bandwidth and limited energy available from onboard batteries. As a resource-efficient control strategy, event-triggered control has garnered increasing attention from researchers in the field of networked control systems. By constructing a closed-loop connection between the real-time system behavior and transmission decisions, event-triggered control effectively balances system performance with resource consumption. This monograph reviews the fundamental concepts and recent progress in event-triggered networked control for continuous-time deterministic systems. It begins with a brief introduction to the foundational setups of networked and event-triggered control systems. The discussion then explores several widely used event-triggered control strategies, providing a comprehensive overview of their various event-triggering conditions, operating mechanisms, and the respective advantages and disadvantages of each. Next, two primary methods employed in the analysis and design of event-triggered control systems are presented: the emulation-based approach and the co-design approach. Finally, the monograph highlights recent advances in the analysis and design of event-triggered networked control systems, with particular emphasis on adapting event-triggering conditions to accommodate diverse scenarios involving specific performance objectives and network-induced imperfections.