Output tracking control of non‐minimum phase systems using on‐line output redefinition approach based on barrier function method

Abstract

This paper considers the output tracking problem of non-minimum phase non-linear systems using the inverse dynamics control which is impossible in conventional methods due to unstable zero dynamics. The proposed method is based on the output redefinition approach defined as a parametric function. The tracking error is decomposed into two terms. The first one named redefined output tracking error is the difference between the redefined output and the reference signal, and the second one is the distance between the redefined output and the system output. For the first term, due to minimum phase property of the system with the redefined output, an inverse dynamics control is used to guarantee the convergence of the redefined output tracking error to zero. To minimize the second term, the parameters of the redefined output are set by solving an optimization problem whose constraints include minimum phase conditions. To solve the optimization problem which satisfies all constraints, the barrier function method as an interior point method is adopted. The optimization parameters are set using steepest descent algorithm. Due to online updating the redefined output parameters, the related zero dynamics is time varying. Therefore, sufficient conditions for exponential stability of the resulting time-varying zero dynamics are obtained.