Simple multivariable adaptive control with application to flexible structures

All adaptive controllers require a certain amount of prior information regarding the plant to be controlled to achieve the desired control objectives. In the context of multivariable adaptive control, not only is the prior information quite significant, but also the complexity of the adaptive controller is too high. In this paper, the authors introduce low order multivariable adaptive controllers which are easy to implement, and require less prior information than most other adaptive controllers. The performance of the resulting adaptive system is evaluated in the context of vibration suppression in large flexible structures.