Nonsmooth identification of mechanical systems with backlash-like hysteresis

Backlash-like hysteresis is one of the nonsmooth and multi-valued nonlinearities usually existing in mechanical systems. The traditional identification method is quite difficult to be used to model the systems involved with such complex nonlinearities. In this paper, a nonsmooth recursive identification algorithm for the systems with backlashlike hysteresis is proposed. In this method, the concept of Clarke subgradient is introduced to approximate the gradients at nonsmooth points and the so-called bundle method is used to obtain the optimization search direction in nonsmooth cases. Then, a recursive algorithm based on the idea of bundle method is developed for parameter estimation. After that, the convergence analysis of the algorithm is investigated. Finally, simulation results to validate the proposed method on a simulated mechanical transmission system are presented.