Event-triggered receding horizon control via actor-critic design

In this paper, we propose a novel event-triggered near-optimal control for nonlinear continuoustime systems. The receding horizon principle is utilized to improve the system robustness and obtain better dynamic control performance. In the proposed structure, we first decompose the infinite horizon optimal control into a series of finite horizon optimal problems. Then a learning strategy is adopted, in which an actor network is employed to approximate the cost function and an critic network is used to learn the optimal control law in each finite horizon. Furthermore, in order to reduce the computational cost and transmission cost, an event-triggered strategy is applied. We design an adaptive trigger condition, so that the signal transmissions and controller updates are conducted in an aperiodic way. Detailed stability analysis shows that the nonlinear system with the developed event-triggered optimal control policy is asymptotically stable. Simulation results on a single-link robot arm with different noise types have demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed method.