Robust PI-Type Output Feedback Control of Unknown Nonlinear Systems

The proportional-integral (PI) control method is long well-known because of its simplicity as well as effectiveness. Although the PI control method overwhelmingly dominates engineering applications, the issue of developing a general PI control for nonlinear systems remains open. This article considers the PI control problem for a family of unknown nonlinear systems. A structurally simple and computationally inexpensive PI-type control approach with constant gains is provided to solve the problem, which maintains preassigned transient as well as steady-state performance and guarantees the global stability of closed-loop systems. The key to possessing such properties comes down to the transformation and modification of tracking errors. The effectiveness of the presented control approach is assessed via the experiment on a pneumatic artificial muscle, and the results corroborate the theoretical findings.