Giulio Betti, Marcello Farina, Riccardo Scattolini

The Distributed Predictive Control (DPC) algorithm presented in this chapter has been designed for control of an overall system made by linear discrete time dynamically interconnected subsystems. The underlying rationale is that each subsystem knows in advance the future state and input trajectories of the other subsystems and guarantees that its actual trajectories lie within certain bounds in the neighborhood of the reference ones. This method enjoys the following properties: (i) state and input constraints can be considered; (ii) convergence is guaranteed; (iii) it is not necessary for each subsystem to know the dynamical models of the other subsystems; (iv) the transmission of information is limited.