An extension of the Georgiou-Smith example: Boundedness and attractivity in the presence of unmodelled dynamics via nonlinear PI control
Provides theoretical robustness guarantees for nonlinear PI control in the presence of unmodelled dynamics, addressing a known challenge in adaptive control.
This paper extends the Georgiou-Smith example to nonlinear systems, proving that a nonlinear PI controller with Nussbaum gain ensures global boundedness and attractivity despite fast parasitic dynamics and unknown control direction.
In this paper, a nonlinear extension of the Georgiou-Smith system is considered and robustness results are proved for a class of nonlinear PI controllers with respect to fast parasitic first-order dynamics. More specifically, for a perturbed nonlinear system with sector bounded nonlinearity and unknown control direction, sufficient conditions for global boundedness and attractivity have been derived. It is shown that the closed loop system is globally bounded and attractive if (i) the unmodelled dynamics are sufficiently fast and (ii) the PI control gain has the Nussbaum function property. For the case of nominally unstable systems, the Nussbaum property of the control gain appears to be crucial. A simulation study confirms the theoretical results.