Global practical tracking via adaptive output-feedback for uncertain nonlinear systems with generalized control coefficients

This paper investigates the global practical tracking via adaptive output-feedback for a class of uncertain nonlinear systems with generalized control coefficients. Notably, the system in question has the function-of-output control coefficients and the serious unknowns in the system and the reference signal, and hence is essentially different from the existing closely related literature. To solve the global practical tracking, a high-gain observer is first introduced to reconstruct the unmeasurable system states, and then an adaptive output-feedback controller is designed. It is worth emphasizing that the gains in the designed observer and controller are functions of time and output, for which a novel updating law of the high-gain is introduced to overcome the additional system nonlinearities and the serious unknowns mentioned above. The designed controller is shown such that all the states of the closed-loop system are globally bounded, and furthermore, tracking error will be ultimately prescribed sufficiently small. A numerical simulation is provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.