Symbolic Control Design of an Artificial Pancreas for Type-2 Diabetes

Diabetes is a widespread disease characterized by chronic hyperglycemia so that diabetic individuals usually require the administration of exogenous insulin for survival. As a consequence, in the context of the so-called artificial pancreas, many glucose control methods have been presented in the last few years. In this work, we focus on type-2 diabetes and propose a novel model-based glucose control technique based on the use of symbolic models, which are finite approximations of complex dynamical systems. This framework allows taking into account nonlinearities and delays in the dynamics, uncertainties, and input bounds, as well as nonidealities coming from the interaction between physical plant and digital environment. The methodology is extensively validated over a virtual patient model, broadly accepted as a substitute to animal trials in the preclinical testing of closed-loop glucose control strategies. The results show the effectiveness and the robustness of the approach.