Tracking control with prescribed transient behaviour for systems of known relative degree

Tracking of a reference signal (assumed bounded with essentially bounded derivative) is considered for multi-input, multi-output linear systems satisfying the following structural assumptions: (i) arbitrary—but known—relative degree, (ii) the “high-frequency gain” matrix is sign definite—but of unknown sign, (iii) exponentially stable zero dynamics. The first control objective is tracking, by the output y, with prescribed accuracy: given λ>0 (arbitrarily small), determine a feedback strategy which ensures that, for every reference signal r, the tracking error e=y-r is ultimately bounded by λ (that is, e(t)<λ for all t sufficiently large). The second objective is guaranteed output transient performance: the evolution of the tracking error should be contained in a prescribed performance funnel (determined by a function ). Both objectives are achieved by a filter in conjunction with a feedback function of the filter states, the tracking error and a gain parameter. The latter is generated via a feedback function of the tracking error and the funnel parameter . Moreover, the feedback system is robust to nonlinear perturbations bounded by some continuous function of the output. The feedback structure essentially exploits an intrinsic high-gain property of the system/filter interconnection by ensuring that, if (t,e(t)) approaches the funnel boundary, then the gain attains values sufficiently large to preclude boundary contact.