Evaluation of adaptive fuzzy controllers: a real-world experiment

Several stable adaptive fuzzy control schemes based on feedback linearization and Lyapunov synthesis were proposed in the literature. However, most of such controllers have been only tested on relatively simple simulations examples, in which the effects of noise, uncertainties, computational times and other fundamental problems related to hardware implementation are neglected. In this paper, we study and compare direct and indirect adaptive control schemes by means of an experimental benchmark (two coupled DC machines). For the indirect schemes, we consider both the standard adaptive laws based on tracking error and composite adaptive laws based on tracking and prediction error. The goal of this work is to gain insight in the benefits and drawbacks of the different variants of adaptive fuzzy controllers and to evaluate their potential for practical applications