Nonparametric Nonlinear Model Predictive Control

Model Predictive Control (MPC) has recently found wide acceptance in industrial applications, but its potential has been much impounded by linear models due to the lack of a similarly accepted nonlinear modelling or data based technique. The authors have recently developed a new method for obtaining Volterra kernels of up to third order by use of pseudorandom M-sequence. By use of this method, nonparametric NMPC is derived in discrete-time using multi-dimensional convolution between plant data and Volterra kernel measurements. This approach is applied to an industrial polymerisation process using Volterra kernels of up to the third order. Results show that the nonparametric approach is very efficient and effective and considerably outperforms existing methods, while retaining the original data-based spirit and characteristics of linear MPC.