Abstract

Robust control of a class of uncertain systems that have disturbances and uncertainties not satisfying “matching” condition is investigated in this paper via a disturbance observer based control (DOBC) approach. In the context of this paper, “matched” disturbances/uncertainties stand for the disturbances/uncertainties entering the system through the same channels as control inputs. By properly designing a disturbance compensation gain, a novel composite controller is proposed to counteract the “mismatched” lumped disturbances from the output channels. The proposed method significantly extends the applicability of the {DOBC} methods. Rigorous stability analysis of the closed-loop system with the proposed method is established under mild assumptions. The proposed method is applied to a nonlinear {MAGnetic} {LEViation} (MAGLEV) suspension system. Simulation shows that compared to the widely used integral control method, the proposed method provides significantly improved disturbance rejection and robustness against load variation.