Reinforcement learning for the adaptive control of nonlinear systems

The adaptive control of nonlinear systems is a nontrivial problem. Examples of this class of problems are found widely in many areas of control applications. While techniques for the adaptive control of linear systems have been well-established in the literature, there are few corresponding techniques for nonlinear systems. In this work an attempt is made to present a method for the adaptive control of nonlinear systems based on a feedfoward neural network. The proposed approach incorporates a neuro-controller used within a reinforcement learning framework, which reduces the problem to one of learning a stochastic approximation of an unknown average error surface. Emphasis is placed on the fact that the neuro-controller dose not need any input/output information about the controlled system. The proposed method promises to be an efficient tool for adaptive control for both static and dynamic nonlinear systems. Several examples are included to illustrate the proposed scheme