A new robust adaptive control algorithm for linear time-varying plants

Robustness is an important property of a control system. Robust adaptive control has been an active research area for more than a decade. Since it was shown that un-modelled dynamics or even a small bounded disturbance can cause most adaptive control algorithms to go unstable, various modifications of the adaptive control algorithms have been developed to counteract instability and improve robustness with respect to unmodelled dynamics and bounded disturbances. However, we know that most of the modified approaches to achieve robustness require knowledge of either the parameter of bounding function on the unmodelled dynamics, or the upper bound on the disturbances, or the bound on the norm of unknown matching controller/plant parameters, and such knowledge can hardly be obtained in practice. A new indirect adaptive control algorithm for linear time-varying plants is proposed to achieve robustness to a class of unmodelled dynamics, bounded disturbances and plant parameter time variations. A modified relative dead zone technique is used, so that knowledge of the parameters of the upper bounding function on the unmodelled dynamics and the disturbances is not required. The stability analysis and the robust performance of adoptively controlled time-varying systems are provided for the new scheme. A simulation example is given to show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.