Decentralized adaptive robust control and its applications to an uncertain flexible beam

We consider a class of nonlinear uncertain interconnected systems with time-varying uncertainty. The uncertainty may arise within each system as well as in the interconnections. The uncertainty is assumed to be bounded but the bound is unknown. No a priori statistical information is imposed. Decentralized adaptive robust control is proposed for each system. The control has two parts. First, an adaptive scheme for the estimation of the bound is constructed. Second, a robust control, which is based on the adaptive parameter, is adopted for each system. The control is then applied to an uncertain flexible beam.