A new adaptive law for robust adaptation without persistent excitation

A new adaptive law motivated by the work of loannou and Kokotovic (1983) is proposed for the robust adaptive control of plants with unknown parameters. In this adaptive law the output error plays a dual role in the adjustment of the control parameter vector. The advantages of using the adaptive law over others proposed in the literature are discussed. In the ideal case the adaptive system has bounded solutions; in addition, the origin of the error equations is exponentially stable when the reference input is persistently exciting and has a sufficiently large amplitude. The adaptive system is also shown to be robust under bounded external disturbances. Finally, it is shown that, by suitably modifying the adaptive law, the overall system can be made robust in the presence of a class of unmodeled dynamics of the plant. Simulation results are presented throughout the paper to complement the theoretical developments.