Nonlinear Output Regulation

This book provides a comprehensive and in-depth treatment of one of the most important control problems: the nonlinear output regulation problem. It contains up-to-date research results and algorithms and tools for approaching and solving the output regulation problem and other related problems, such as robust stabilization of nonlinear systems. The author also offers personal insights about solving the output regulation problem. Output regulation is a general mathematical formulation of many control problems encountered in daily life including cruise control of automobiles, landing and takeoff of aircraft, manipulation of robot arms, orbiting of satellites, and speed regulation of motors. Nonlinear Output Regulation: Theory and Applications provides a self-contained treatment starting with an introduction to the linear output regulation problem and a review of the fundamental nonlinear control theory. The author's presentation strikes a balance between the theoretical foundation of the problem and the practical applications of the theory. The book is accompanied by many examples, including practical case studies with numerical simulations based on Matlab /SIMULINK. In addition to the time-tested results on the output regulation problem obtained over the past two decades by the author and other leading researchers in this field, the book highlights a newly developed general framework that converts the robust output regulation problem for a given nonlinear system into a robust stabilization problem for an augmented system. This general framework is based on the construction of nonlinear internal models and offers greater flexibility to incorporate recent new stabilization techniques, thus setting the stage for systematically tackling robust output regulation with global stability. This general framework has been successfully applied to solve the output regulation problem with global stability for several classes of important nonlinear problems.