Robust adaptive dynamic programming for optimal nonlinear control design

This paper studies the robust optimal control design for uncertain nonlinear systems from a perspective of robust adaptive dynamic programming (robust-ADP). The objective is to fill up a gap in the past literature of ADP where dynamic uncertainties, or unmodeled dynamics, are not addressed. A key strategy is to integrate tools from modern nonlinear control theory, such as the robust redesign and the backstepping techniques as well as the nonlinear small-gain theorem, with the theory of ADP. The proposed robust-ADP methodology can be viewed as a natural extension of ADP to uncertain nonlinear systems. A practical learning algorithm is developed in this paper, and has been applied to analyze a sensorimotor control problem.