Falsified Model-Invariant Safety-Preserving Control With Application to Closed-Loop Anesthesia

This brief introduces a novel safety-preserving control scheme with minimal conservatism for uncertain systems. We have recently introduced the model-invariant safety verification technique that provides a formal guarantee of safety for systems with multiplicative model uncertainty. This approach requires a multi-model description of model uncertainty. The resulting safety system may be conservative for systems that do not exhibit the worst case dynamical response. In this brief, we employ model falsification to reduce conservatism of the model-invariant safety verification technique. Members of a model set that characterizes model uncertainty are falsified if discrepancy between predictions of those models and measured responses of the uncertain system is established, thereby reducing model uncertainty. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed technique, we formalize a model-invariant safety system for closed-loop propofol anesthesia. The safety system maintains predicted propofol concentration in plasma as well as the patient's blood pressure within safety bounds despite uncertainty in patient responses to propofol.