Passivity Based Control of a Class of Nonlinear Systems and its Application to the Level Regulation of a Conical Tank

An adaptive passivity-based controller (APBC) and a non-adaptive passivity-based controller (PBC) are proposed in this paper. In contrast to PBC, the APBC strategy does not make use of the knowledge of the values of the plant parameters. Both strategies are also designed and applied to the level regulation of a conical tank, discussing the experimental results obtained after performing an experimental comparative study to verify the behavior of the system under control and to demonstrate the advantages and disadvantages of the controllers. The results show that the design of the APBC is simpler than the design of PBC controllers by not requiring the knowledge of the plant parameters; it is also more robust in front of variations of a plant parameter.