Learning disturbance models for offset-free reference tracking

This work presents a nonlinear control framework that guarantees asymptotic offset-free tracking of generic reference trajectories by learning a nonlinear disturbance model, which compensates for input disturbances and model-plant mismatch.Our approach generalizes the well-established method of using an observer to estimate a constant disturbance to allow tracking constant setpoints with zero steady-state error. In this article, the disturbance model is generalized to a nonlinear static function of the plant’s state and command input, learned online, so as to perfectly track time-varying reference trajectories under certain assumptions on the model and provided that future reference samples are available. We compare our approach with the classical constant disturbance model in numerical simulations, showing its superiority.