Model-free optimal controller design for continuous-time nonlinear systems by adaptive dynamic programming based on a precompensator

In this paper, we consider the problem of developing a controller for continuous-time nonlinear systems where the equations governing the system are unknown. Using the measurements, two new online schemes are presented for synthesizing a controller without building or assuming a model for the system, by two new implementation schemes based on adaptive dynamic programming (ADP). To circumvent the requirement of the prior knowledge for systems, a precompensator is introduced to construct an augmented system. The corresponding Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (HJB) equation is solved by adaptive dynamic programming, which consists of the least-squared technique, neural network approximator and policy iteration (PI) algorithm. The main idea of our method is to sample the information of state, state derivative and input to update the weighs of neural network by least-squared technique. The update process is implemented in the framework of PI. In this paper, two new implemenption schemes are presented. Finally, several examples are given to illustrate the effectiveness of our schemes. (C) 2014 ISA. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.