On Estimating the Probabilistic Region of Attraction for Partially Unknown Nonlinear Systems: An Sum-of-Squares Approach

Estimating the region of attraction for partially unknown nonlinear systems is a challenging issue. In this paper, we propose a tractable method to generate an estimated region of attraction with probability bounds, by searching an optimal polynomial barrier function. Chebyshev interpolants, Gaussian processes and sum-of-squares programmings are used in this paper. To approximate the unknown non-polynomial dynamics, a polynomial mean function of Gaussian processes model is computed to represent the exact dynamics based on the Chebyshev interpolants. Furthermore, probabilistic conditions are given such that all the estimates are located in certain probability bounds. Numerical examples are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.