Composite nonlinear feedback control for strict-feedback nonlinear systems with input saturation

This paper focuses on composite nonlinear feedback (CNF) controller design for tracking control problem of strict-feedback nonlinear systems with input saturation to address the improvement of transient performance. First, without considering the input saturation, a stabilisation control law is designed by using standard backstepping technique for the nonlinear system, then a feedforward control law is added to the backstepping-based stabilisation control law to construct a tracking control law. The tracking control law is tuned to drive the output of the closed-loop system to track a command input with quick response. Then, an additional nonlinear feedback law is constructed and combined with the tracking control law to obtain a CNF control law. The role of this additional nonlinear feedback law is to smoothly change the damping ratio of the closed-loop system while the system output approaches the command input, and to reduce overshoot caused by the tracking control law. It is shown that the extra-adding nonlinear feedback part does not cause the loss of stability of the closed-loop system in its attractive basin.