Prescribed performance control of strict feedback systems with deadzone input nonlinearity

A continuous, state-feedback controller is proposed for strict feedback systems with deadzone input nonlinearity. The scheme achieves prescribed bounds on the transient and steady state output error performance despite the uncertainty in system nonlinearities and deadzone characteristics. For the latter, only a locally Lipschitz property is assumed to hold, with strictly increasing nonlinearities outside the dead-band, thus forming a fairly general class of admissible deadzones. Furthermore, approximating structures, i.e., neural/fuzzy systems, etc., are not utilized and, moreover, the backstepping “explosion of complexity” issue is eliminated without residing to filtering, thus resulting in a low complexity design. The proposed controller evades the construction of a deadzone inverse and does not employ a special analytical deadzone representation. Simulations are performed to verify the theoretical findings.