Adaptive output feedback control of large-scale nonlinear time-delay systems with uncertain output equations

For a class of large-scale nonlinear time-delay systems with uncertain output equations, the problem of global state asymptotic regulation is addressed by output feedback. The class of systems under consideration are subject to feedforward growth conditions with unknown growth rate and time delays in inputs and outputs. To deal with the system uncertainties and the unknown delays, a novel low-gain observer with adaptive gain is firstly proposed; next, an adaptive output feedback delay-free controller is constructed by combining Lyapunov-Krasovskii functional with backstepping algorithm. Compared with the existing results, the controllers proposed are capable of handling both the uncertain output functions and the unknown time delays in inputs and outputs. With the help of dynamic scaling technique, it is shown that the closed-loop states converge asymptotically to zero, while the adaptive gain is bounded globally. Finally, the effectiveness of our control schemes are illustrated by three examples.