Disturbance observer-based tracking control with prescribed performance specifications for a class of nonlinear systems subject to mismatched disturbances

This work investigates simultaneous prescribed performance tracking control and mismatched disturbance rejection problems for a class of strict-feedback nonlinear systems. A novel control scheme combining prescribed performance control, disturbance observer technique, and backstepping method is proposed. The disturbance estimations are introduced into the design of virtual control law design in each step to compensate the mismatched disturbances. To further improve the control performance, a prescribed performance function characterizing the error convergence rate, maximum overshoot, and steady-state error is used to construct the composite controller. The proposed controller guarantees transient and steady-state performance specifications of tracking error and provides much better disturbance attenuation ability simultaneously. Rigorous stability analysis for the closed-loop system is established by direct Lyapunov function method. It is shown that all the states in the resulting closed-loop system are stable, and the tracking error evolves within the prescribed performance boundaries and asymptotically converges to zero even in the presence of mismatched external disturbances. Finally, theoretical results are illustrated and demonstrated by two simulation examples.