Deterministic learning from control of nonlinear systems with disturbances

In this paper, we investigate deterministic learning in environments with disturbances. We will show that for a class of uncertain nonlinear systems with bounded disturbances, by using an appropriately designed adaptive neural controller, the disturbances are attenuated and the system output tracks a periodic orbit in finite time. As radial basis function (RBF) neural networks (NN) are employed, this leads to the satisfaction of a partial persistence of the excitation (PE) condition. By using the uniform complete observability (UCO) technique, it is analyzed that partial estimated NN weights will converge to a neighborhood of zero, with the size of the neighborhood depending on the amplitude of disturbances as well as on the control gains. Locally-accurate approximation of unknown system dynamics can still be achieved in the stable NN control process. The approximation error level is influenced by the amplitude of disturbances. The obtained knowledge of system dynamics can be reused in another control process towards stability and improved performance. Simulation studies are included to demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach.