Performance Guaranteed Robust Tracking Control of MIMO Nonlinear Systems with Input Delays: A Global and Low-Complexity Solution

This article presents a global performance guaranteed tracking control method for a class of general strict-feedback multi-input and multi-output (MIMO) nonlinear systems with unknown nonlinearities and unknown time-varying input delays. By introducing a novel error transformation embedded with the Lyapunov-Krasovskii functional (LKF), the developed control scheme exhibits several appealing features: 1) it is able to achieve global prescribed performance tracking for uncertain MIMO systems with delayed inputs, while at the same time eliminating the constraint conditions imposing on initial values between the tracking/virtual error and the performance function; 2) there is no need for any a priori knowledge regarding the nonlinearities of the system nor a prior knowledge of time derivatives of the desired trajectory, making the resultant controller simpler in structure and less expensive in computation; 3) the control scheme includes a new differentiable time-varying feedback term, which gracefully compensates the unknown input delays and unknown control gain coefficient matrices; and 4) the controllability condition is relaxed, which enlarges the applicability of the proposed strategy. Finally, a two-link robotic manipulator example is provided to demonstrate the reliability of the theoretical results.