Applications of a New Approach to Adaptive Control

Adaptive controllers can be designed by a variety of different methodologies that have been developed over the past 35 years. However, all those methodologies have one thing in common, they lead to adaptive controllers that are intrinsically nonlinear in structure. Recently a new, unorthodox approach to the adaptive control problem has been developed [1]-[5]. This new methodology leads to a new class of adaptive controllers that, in many cases, are entirely linear and have all constant parameters (constant gains). In the present paper, this new approach to adaptive control is used to design "linear adaptive controllers" for two example applications, and the closed-loop adaptive performance obtained in each case is illustrated by digital simulation tests. These results demonstrate that the new linear adaptive controllers are able to produce a surprisingly high-degree of adaptation over significant ranges of plant parameter variations and disturbances.