A Koopman Operator Approach to Data-Driven Control of Semilinear Parabolic Systems

Abstract: This paper is concerned with the data-driven stabilization of unknown boundary controlled semilinear parabolic systems. The nonlinear dynamics of the system are lifted using a finite number of eigenfunctionals of the Koopman operator related to the autonomous semilinear PDE. This results in a novel data-driven finite-dimensional model of the lifted dynamics, which is amenable to apply design procedures for finite-dimensional systems to stabilize the semilinear parabolic system. In order to facilitate this, a bilinearization of the lifted dynamics is considered and feedback linearization is applied for the data-driven stabilization of the semilinear parabolic PDE. This reveals a novel connection between the assignment of eigenfunctionals to the closed-loop Koopman operator and feedback linearization. By making use of a modal representation, exponential stability of the closed-loop system in the presence of errors resulting from the data-driven computation of eigenfunctionals and the bilinearization is verified. The data-driven controller directly follows from applying generalized eDMD to state data available for the semilinear parabolic PDE. An example of an unstable semilinear reaction-diffusion system with finite-time blow up demonstrates the novel data-driven stabilization approach.