Plug-and-play process control: Improving control performance through sensor addition and pre-filtering

An important issue in the area of reconfigurable systems is how to respond correctly if new components are added. We consider the problem of improving control performance for a system where a new set of sensors becomes available. It is assumed that a complete re-design of the control system is undesirable for various reasons. The sensor dynamics are unknown and must be identified via experiments. The paper demonstrates how new sensor information can be fused with existing sensor information and fed to the existing control system, either based on knowledge of the existing plant or in an entirely data-driven fashion. The method is illustrated on a numerical example.