Adaptive fuzzy control: experiments and comparative analyses

Advances in nonlinear control theory have provided the mathematical foundations necessary to establish conditions for stability of several types of adaptive fuzzy controllers. However, very few, if any, of these techniques have been compared to conventional adaptive or nonadaptive nonlinear controllers or tested beyond simulation; therefore, many of them remain as purely theoretical developments whose practical value is difficult to ascertain. In this paper we develop three case studies where we perform a comparative analysis between the adaptive fuzzy techniques in Spooner and Passino (1995,1996) and some conventional adaptive and nonadaptive nonlinear control techniques. In each case, the analysis is performed both in simulation and in implementation, in order to show practical examples of how the performance of these controllers compares to conventional controllers in real systems.