Why should we use adaptive control?

The “folklore” of adaptive control is based on the assumption that the adaptive feedback system will deliver better performance for plants with uncertain parameters. There are dozens of books and hundreds of papers devoted to the design and evaluation of adaptive control systems using a great variety of assumptions, theories, architectures and methodologies (see refs. [1] and [2] for a brief survey). However, the hoped-for performance improvements are invariably demonstrated by simulations and, in very rare cases, real applications.