Event‐triggered adaptive tracking control for nonlinear systems with input saturation and unknown control directions

Abstract This article is concerned with event‐triggered adaptive tracking control design of strict‐feedback nonlinear systems, which are subject to input saturation and unknown control directions. In the design procedure, a smooth nonlinear function is employed to approximate the saturation function so that the controller can be designed under the framework of backstepping. The Nussbaum gain technique is employed to address the issue of the unknown control directions. A predetermined time convergent performance function and a nonlinear mapping technique are introduced to guarantee that the tracking error can converge in the predetermined time with a fast convergence rate and a high accuracy. Then the event‐triggered adaptive prescribed performance tracking control strategy is proposed, which not only ensures the boundedness of all the closed‐loop signals and the convergence of tracking error but also reduces the communication burden from the controller to the actuator. At last, the simulation study further tests the availability of the proposed control strategy.