Lyapunov-based switching control of nonlinear systems using high-gain observers

We consider output feedback stabilization of uniformly observable uncertain nonlinear systems when the uncertain parameters belong to a known but comparably large compact set. In a previous paper, we proposed a new logic-based switching control to improve the performance of continuous high-gain-observer-based sliding mode controllers. Our main goal here is to show that similar techniques can be exploited for solving challenging control problems for a more general class of uncertain nonlinear systems. We require neither the sign of the high-frequency gain to be known nor the system to be minimum-phase. The key idea is to split the set of parameters into smaller subsets, design a controller for each of them, and switch the controller if, after a dwell-time period, the derivative of the Lyapunov function does not satisfy a certain inequality. A high-gain observer is used to estimate the derivatives of the output as well as the derivative of the Lyapunov function. Another goal of this paper is to introduce a switching strategy that uses on-line information to decide on the controller to switch to, instead of using a pre-sorted list as in our previous work. The new strategy can improve the transient performance of the system.