Locally activated neural networks and stable neural controller design for nonlinear dynamic systems

A stable neural control scheme using a locally activated neural network has been proposed for a class of nonlinear dynamic systems. The locally activated neural network, for a given input, essentially selects a small subset of the network hidden nodes for output computation using the CMAC-like content addressing mechanism. This network aims to maintain local representations of the system dynamics. Thus, the global control performance in the concerned state space is achieved by the cooperation of many local control efforts and furthermore, real-time control can be facilitated because only a small sized network is involved to control and learn at any given time. The proposed control scheme is composed of two stages: (1) prediction error based learning in which the network attempts to learn the nonlinear basis functions of the plant inverse dynamics by a modified backpropagation learning rule; and (2) tracking error based learning in which the network weights are further fine-tuned using the basis set obtained in (1). This basis set spans the locally partitioned vector space of the system inverse dynamics when the prediction error based learning is achieved within a prescribed error tolerance. For uniform stability, the sliding mode control is introduced as a safety mechanism when the network has not sufficiently learned the plant dynamics yet. With suitable assumptions on the controlled plant, global stability and tracking error convergence proof has been given. Finally, the proposed control scheme is verified with computer simulation.