CDC semi-plenary: “Robust adaptive control: The search for the Holy Grail”

The control system which can force any unknown time varying plant meet the performance requirements with adequate robustness properties is considered as the corresponding Holy Grail in control design. Adaptive control has often been viewed as one of the approaches that could meet this challenge or at least a step towards that direction. Despite the truly remarkable advances in the theory of adaptive control and successful applications there is no justification that we discovered such a miraculous control system. In this talk we present a brief history of the developments in adaptive control and applications over the last 30 years, discuss assumptions, advantages, disadvantages, status of the field today as well as present some of the most recent results. We will explain how the library of tools for practical control design is enriched by the adaptive control methodologies and how these methodologies are used to solve many practical problems without having to worry about the discovery of the ultimate control design which may or may not exist.