Performance Analysis of Model-Free Control and PID Control on a Class of Nonlinear MIMO Systems

Modern dynamical systems are generally non-linear, which make traditional linear controllers infeasible in some cases. To cope with the need for controlling such modern systems, researchers have developed robust nonlinear controllers that leverage function approximators such as neural networks and polynomials. In this work, we investigate one successful nonlinear controller, the SPSA (si-multaneous perturbation stochastic approximation)-based model-free control. We shall make a rigorous performance analysis on a class of nonlinear MIMO systems. As a benchmark, we compare it with PID, one of the most-widely used control technique.