On the role of subspace zeros in retrospective cost adaptive control of non-square plants

Abstract

We consider adaptive control of non-square plants, that is, plants that have an unequal number of inputs and outputs. In particular, we focus on retrospective cost adaptive control (RCAC), which is a direct, discrete-time adaptive control algorithm that is applicable to stabilisation, command following, disturbance rejection, and model reference control problems. Previous studies on RCAC have focused on control of square plants. In the square case, RCAC requires knowledge of the first non-zero Markov parameter and the non-minimum-phase (NMP) transmission zeros of the plant, if any. No additional information about the plant or the exogenous signals need be known. The goal of the present paper is to consider RCAC for non-square plants. Unlike the square case, we show that the assumption that the non-square plant is minimum phase does not guarantee closed-loop stability and signal boundedness. The main purpose of this paper is to establish the existence of time-invariant input and output subspaces corresponding to the adaptive controller. In particular, we show that RCAC implicitly squares down non-square plants through pre-/post-compensation of the non-square plant with a constant matrix. We show that, for wide plants, the control input generated by RCAC lies in a time-invariant ‘input subspace’, which is equivalent to pre-compensating the plant with a constant matrix. On the other hand, for tall plants, we show that the controller update is driven by the output of the plant post-compensated with a constant matrix. Accordingly, in either case, signal boundedness properties of the closed-loop system are determined by the transmission zeros of the squared system, which we call the ‘subspace zeros’. To deal with NMP subspace zeros, we introduce a robustness modification, which prevents RCAC from cancelling the NMP subspace zeros.

Keywords:

• adaptive control
• non-square systems
• transmission zeros
• input-subspace zeros
• output-subspace zeros