Robust tracking and model following of uncertain nonlinear systems with some uncertainties and dead-zone inputs

Abstract

The problem of robust tracking and model following is reconsidered for a class of uncertain nonlinear systems with some uncertainties and dead-zone input constraints. In this paper, the system uncertainties are regarded as some nonlinear functions which are not required to must satisfy the matching conditions. That is, being different from traditional robust control theory, the matched structures of uncertainties are sufficient, but not necessary, for being able always to design some types of robust tracking control schemes. In addition, the external disturbances of dynamical systems are assumed to be any bounded functions which is not also required to satisfy the matching condition. By making use of the integral inequality, instead of Lyapunov function, a class of robust tracking control schemes is constructed to guarantee the uniform exponential boundedness of the model tracking errors. Moreover, the upper bounds of nonlinear uncertainties are not required to be known, and it is also unnecessary to know or estimate the characteristic parameters of dead-zone functions. Therefore, the resulting robust tracking control schemes have a simple structure. Actually, the resulting robust tracking control scheme is a linear feedback control one with a self-tuning control gain. Finally, an illustrative numerical example is provided to demonstrate the validity of the presented theoretical results.

Keywords:

• Uncertain systems
• model following
• tracking control
• dead-zone input constraint
• integral inequality
• robust control

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data Availability Statement

The simliar date employed in the numerical example (see Section 4) are openly available in IET Control Theory and Applications at https://doi.org/10.1049/iet-cta.2019.1172.