MATLAB: How to specify plant while using MPC Toolbox when I don’t have state space equations of the plant

Model Predictive Control Toolbox

I have a Simulink model of my nonlinear plant but I do not have the state space equations which are needed while importing plant in the MPC Designer. How can I get the state space equations or specify my plant in another way for Model Predictive Control?

Best Answer

To create a plant model, you can directly specify a linear model (state space equations), linearize a Simulink model, or identify a linear model using measured data. Following documentation explains this in detail:

https://www.mathworks.com/help/releases/R2016b/mpc/plant-specification.html

As described in the above documentation, you can use the MPC Designer App to linearize your plant and obtain the plant model:

https://www.mathworks.com/help/releases/R2016b/mpc/gs/linearize-simulink-models-using-mpc-designer.html

You can also use following method to linearize your Simulink model without using the MPC Designer:

https://www.mathworks.com/help/releases/R2016b/mpc/gs/using-simulink-to-develop-lti-models.html

If your model is strongly nonlinear and you wish to use another control mechanism you can explore Adaptive MPC or Gain-Scheduled MPC (Non-linear MPC is also available starting from R2017a):

https://www.mathworks.com/help/releases/R2016b/mpc/