This paper deals with adaptive control of a class of nonlinear dynamic
systems with nonlinear parametrization. In this class, the state vari
ables are assumed to be accessible and the nonlinearity in the paramet
ers is assumed to be either convex or concave. By introducing a tuning
function and an adaptive law based on a min-max strategy, it is shown
that such a class of dynamic systems can be adaptively controlled in
a stable manner. Global boundedness of the overall adaptive system and
tracking to within a desired precision are established with the new a
daptive controller. The proposed controller is applied to a precise-po
sitioning problem in the presence of nonlinearly parametrized friction
dynamics. It is shown that the controller leads to position errors an
d friction compensation that are orders of magnitude better than those
based on estimation of linear parametrizations. The fact that the new
parameter estimation strategy used is distinct from the traditionally
used gradient schemes, permits the expansion of the scope of adaptive
control, which has been restricted hitherto, in most cases, to system
s with linear parametrization. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All righ
ts reserved.