Asymptotic Tracking Control for Uncertain Nonlinear Strict-Feedback Systems With Unknown Time-Varying Delays

It is nontrivial to achieve asymptotic tracking control for uncertain nonlinear strict-feedback systems with unknown time-varying delays. This problem becomes even more challenging if the control direction is unknown. To address such problem, the Lyapunov–Krasovskii functional (LKF) is used to deal with the time delays, and the neural network (NN) is applied to compensate for the time-delay-free yet unknown terms arising from the derivative of LKF, and then an NN-based adaptive control scheme is constructed on the basis of backstepping technique, which enables the output tracking error to converge to zero asymptotically. Besides, with a milder condition on time delay functions, the notorious singularity issue commonly encountered in coping with time delay problems is subtly settled, which makes the proposed scheme simple in structure and inexpensive in computation. Moreover, all the signals in the closed-loop system are ensured to be semiglobally uniformly ultimately bounded, and the transient performance can be improved with proper choice of design parameters. Both the theoretical analysis and numerical simulation are carried out to validate the relevance of the proposed method.