A family of linear, time-invariant universal adaptive controllers for linear and non-linear plants

A ‘universal adaptive controller’ is a single adaptive controller that can automatically accommodate a significant range of plants having different structures. In this paper, a family of three universal adaptive controllers is presented, one for each of the three cases: first-order plants, second-order plants, and third-order plants. The family of universal adaptive controllers presented here is rather novel in the respect that each controller is all-linear and completely time-invariant. Numerous examples and simulation results are presented to illustrate the ‘universality’ of the proposed adaptive controllers.