Nonlinear Model Predictive Control: From Theory to Application

─While linear model predictive control is popular since the 70s of the past century, only since the 90s there is a steadily increasing interest from control theoreticians as well as control practitioners in nonlinear model predictive control (NMPC). The practical interest is mainly driven by the fact that today’s processes need to be operated under tight performance specifications. At the same time more and more constraints, stemming for example from environmental and safety considerations, need to be satisfied. Often, these demands can only be met when process nonlinearities and constraints are explicitly taken into account in the controller design. Nonlinear predictive control, the extension of the well established linear predictive control to the nonlinear world, is one possible candidate to meet these demands. This paper reviews the basic principle of NMPC, and outlines some of the theoretical, computational, and implementational aspects of this control strategy.