Adaptive tracking control for uncertain nonlinear systems subject to unknown control coefficients, state constraints, and input saturation

Abstract

This article is committed to studying the tracking control problem for a class of uncertain nonlinear system with unknown control coefficients. The system is subject to full state constraints, input saturation constraint, and external disturbances simultaneously. By introducing a hyperbolic tangent function to approximate the saturated input function, the sharp corner caused by the input saturation is avoided. In the meanwhile, an auxiliary system is constructed to compensate the resulting approximation error. By using the barrier Lyapunov function (BLF) based adaptive backsteping control, the Nussbaum-type adaptive controllers are constructed for the augmented system with unknown control direction. It not only ensures the system states are always within the constrained range, but also guarantees the tracking performance of the system, no matter whether the control direction of the system is known or not. Meanwhile, dynamic surface control (DSC) is used in the controller design, which avoids ”computation explosion” caused by the repeated derivation of virtual control law. Aiming at the nonparametric uncertainty of the system, a common adaptive law is designed by combining the unknown constant bounds of the external disturbance with the error term caused by input saturation estimation. It improves the tracking performance of the system and reduces the burden of the controller greatly. Finally, a simulation example is given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme in three scenarios.