A Controllability Gramain Shaping with LMI Constraints under Bures--Wasserstein Distance

Abstract

This paper proposes a controller design method for shaping the controllability Gramian into a desired form to design the effect from exogenous inputs to the system state. Using the Bures--Wasserstein distance, we formulate the shaping problem as the minimization of the distance between the system Gramian and a desired Gramian, and the objective function is shown to be strictly convex on the set of symmetric positive definite matrices. In addition, by deriving a semidefinite programming formulation via a linear matrix inequality (LMI), computational efficiency is improved and additional LMI constraints can be incorporated. When the exogenous input is modeled as Gaussian white noise, the proposed framework is closely related to $H_2$ control, which can be interpreted as a special case of optimal transport. Numerical examples demonstrate anisotropic controllability design for a guidance robot and verify the ability to impose additional directional constraints through LMIs. The numerical examples also confirm that the proposed method approaches $H_2$ control as the desired Gramian tends to zero.

8 pages, 4 figures. Accepted for presentation at the 65th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC 2026), Honolulu, HI, USA,December 15-18, 2026. This is the initially submitted version