Robust control for fuzzy electric power steering system: A two-layer performance approach

This study investigates the angle tracking control of the electric power steering system, which is underactuated and with (possibly fast) time-varying uncertainties. We design the control based on constraint-following, that is, formulating the tracking goal as servo constraints. To tackle the uncertainty, especially the mismatched uncertainty, a robust control is proposed with two-layer performance: deterministically guaranteed and fuzzily optimized. Particularly, the control design is implemented in three steps. First, without considering uncertainty, a nominal control is designed. Second, an uncertainty decomposition technique is presented to account for uncertainty, which creatively allocates the mismatched uncertainty for the robust control design that also builds on the nominal system control. The robust scheme is deterministic without using any "if-then" rules and guarantees uniform boundedness and uniform ultimate boundedness for the system, that is, the deterministically guaranteed performance. Third, by using fuzzy set theory to describe uncertainty, a fuzzy-based performance index, including system performance and control cost, is introduced. A control parameter optimal design problem is formulated and analytically solved, that is, the fuzzily optimized performance. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is illustrated by rigorous proof and the simulation results on the electric power steering system.