Robust adaptive control for a class of cascaded nonlinear systems with applications to space interception

This paper proposes a robust H _∞ ‐based adaptive backstepping control scheme for the output stabilization of a special class of cascaded nonlinear systems. This kind of systems possess the feature that the first sub‐equation is a linear perturbed system, whereas the rest ones perform a general semi‐strict feedback form. Different from the conventional backstepping design approach, the special cascaded structure ensures to introduce the H _∞ technique to the backstepping procedure such that both the robust performance and the robust stability can be simultaneously guaranteed. Within the Lyapunov framework, the proposed control scheme is proved to guarantee (i) the uniformly ultimate boundedness of the system signals with a bound that can be made arbitrarily small by suitably choosing control parameters; (ii) asymptotic output stabilization as long as the uncertain nonlinearities and external disturbances vanish; and (iii) ‐performance of the closed‐loop system. A space interception scenario is utilized to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.