Robustness of an adaptive backstepping controller without modification

This paper examines the robustness of the adaptive controller designed using the backstepping technique proposed in Kristic et al. (Nonlinear and Adaptive Control Design, Wiley, New York, 1995). It is shown that the adaptive controller without any modification still possesses some robustness against a class of unmodeled dynamics. Moreover, the system transient performance in the presence of unmodeled dynamics can be improved to an arbitrary level by adjusting the controller design parameters.