Finite-Time Tracking Control With Prescribed Accuracy for Unknown Nonlinear Systems by Event-Triggered Input

This paper is dealt with the tracking control problem for strict-feedback systems with unknown nonlinearities and unmatched disturbances as well as event-triggered input. A robust control scheme together with an event-triggered update protocol is proposed to solve the problem, which outperforms the existing solutions in the following aspects. First, it guarantees that the tracking error converges to a given bound in a prescribed finite time, unlike the results on exponential convergence with unknown accuracy. Second, for control implementation, only a sequence of binary command signals needs to be sent to the actuator. This further economizes the communication cost in comparison with the conventional event-triggered control protocols. Third, our controller exhibits a simplicity attribute, due to the avoidance of using approximating structures and estimating algorithms and to calculating or filtering certain signal derivatives. The above theoretical findings are illustrated via a comparative simulation study.