Robust control design of uncertain nonlinear systems: a self-compensating and self-tuning approach

The problem of robust stabilisation is considered for a class of uncertain nonlinear systems with linear control term. It is not required that the unforced nominal (nonlinear) system has to be stable and/or has to be known, which means that its Lyapunov function need not be known and/or found for designing a stabilising control scheme to compensate the effect of uncertainty on the systems like some traditional control design approaches. For such a class of uncertain nonlinear systems, a design approach, called a self-compensating and self-tuning one, is presented whereby some robust state feedback control schemes can be easily synthesised. The proposed design approach can result in a linear state feedback control scheme with a time-varying control gain for such a class of uncertain nonlinear systems, which implies the simplicity of the design approach and control results. In addition, the system uncertainty is also not required to have to satisfy the matching conditions.