Robust Feedback Control for a Class of Uncertain MIMO Nonlinear Systems

In this paper, a continuous feedback tracking controller is developed for a class of high-order multi-input multi-output (MIMO) nonlinear systems with an input gain matrix that has nonzero leading principal minors but can be nonsymmetric. Under the mild assumption that the signs of the leading minors of the control input gain matrix are known, the controller yields locally uniformly ultimately bounded (UUB) tracking while compensating for unstructured uncertainty in both the drift vector and the input matrix. First, a full-state feedback controller is designed based on limited assumptions on the structure of the system nonlinearities, and the singularity-free controller is proven to yield locally UUB tracking through a Lyapunov-based analysis. Then, it is shown that an output feedback control can be designed based on a high-gain observer. Simulation results are provided to illustrate the performance of the proposed control algorithm.