Global disturbance rejection for nonlinear lower triangular systems with iISS inverse dynamics and uncertain exosystem

This paper concerns about the global disturbance rejection problem for uncertain nonlinear lower triangular systems with integral input-to-state stable (iISS) inverse dynamics and an uncertain exosystem. The main challenges addressed in this paper include uncertain exosystem, unknown control direction, iISS inverse dynamics, and complex structure of lower triangular systems. Because of the presence of both uncertain exosystem and unknown control direction, simply combining the existing techniques for each of these challenges cannot solve the proposed problem. In fact, to handle the current case, appropriate new update laws for the estimators of the uncertain parameters are required, such that the estimators can be successfully integrated with the internal model principle. Furthermore, the changing supply function technique for iISS systems is utilized to deal with the iISS inverse dynamics. With the proposed controller, the closed-loop system is globally asymptotically stable, and the disturbance is globally rejected. Two simulation examples are finally presented to show the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme and the practical relevance of our work. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.