Sheng Zhang

Sheng Zhang, Fei Liao, Yanqing Chen et al.

The feedback linearization method is further developed for the controller design on general nonlinear systems. Through the Lyapunov stability theory, the intractable nonlinear implicit algebraic control equations are effectively solved, and the asymptotically tracking performance is guaranteed. Moreover, it is proved that the controller may be used in an inverse-free version to the set-point control. With this method, a nonlinear aircraft outer-loop trajectory controller is developed. For the concern regarding the controller's robustness, the integral control technique is combined to counteract the adverse effect from modeling errors. Simulation results verify the well performance of the proposed controller.

Zaiwei Chen, Sheng Zhang, Zhe Zhang et al.

We study the problem of solving fixed-point equations for seminorm-contractive operators and establish foundational results on the non-asymptotic behavior of iterative algorithms in both deterministic and stochastic settings. Specifically, in the deterministic setting, we prove a fixed-point theorem for seminorm-contractive operators, showing that iterates converge geometrically to the kernel of the seminorm. In the stochastic setting, we analyze the corresponding stochastic approximation (SA) algorithm under seminorm-contractive operators and Markovian noise, providing a finite-sample analysis for various stepsize choices. A benchmark for equation solving is linear systems of equations, where the convergence behavior of fixed-point iteration is closely tied to the stability of linear dynamical systems. In this special case, our results provide a complete characterization of system stability with respect to a seminorm, linking it to the solution of a Lyapunov equation in terms of positive semi-definite matrices. In the stochastic setting, we establish a finite-sample analysis for linear Markovian SA without requiring the Hurwitzness assumption. Our theoretical results offer a unified framework for deriving finite-sample bounds for various reinforcement learning algorithms in the average reward setting, including TD($λ$) for policy evaluation (which is a special case of solving a Poisson equation) and Q-learning for control.

Sheng Zhang, Wei-qi Qian

A dynamic backstepping method is proposed to design controllers for nonlinear systems in the pure-feedback form, for which the traditional backstepping method suffers from solving the implicit nonlinear algebraic equation. The idea of this method is to augment the (virtual) controls as states during each recursive step. As new dynamics are included in the design, the resulting controller is in the dynamic feedback form. Procedure of deriving the controller is detailed, and one more Lyapunov design is executed in each step compared with the traditional backstepping method. Under appropriate assumptions, the proposed control scheme achieves the uniformly asymptotically stability. The effectiveness of this method is illustrated by the stabilization and tracking numerical examples.