Adaptive optimal setpoint tracking control of unknown linear continuous-time systems

Abstract

This paper presents a novel adaptive optimal setpoint tracking control method for unknown linear continuous-time systems with constant disturbances using adaptive dynamic programming (ADP). Compared with the existing works, the proposed ADP-based tracking control and disturbance rejection framework has the following advantages: 1) By defining a new performance index, its boundedness is guaranteed without additional discount factor and thus the influence of discount factor on the stability of the closed-loop system is eliminated; 2) According to Lyapunov theory, we prove that the tracking error converges to zero rather than the bounded tracking error of the existing results; 3) It is not to assume that the knowledge of the output matrix is known and a complete model-free tracking control scheme is achieved; 4) The external disturbance input is not required to be measurable, so the proposed method has more practical engineering application. Finally, the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed tracking controller are verified by the rougher flotation operational processes simulation.