Virtual control strategy and conditioning technique for tracking and learning controls under input restrictions

The virtual control strategy for mechanical systems has been recently proposed (Gnucci and Marino, 2021) in the context of under-actuated mechanical systems. Such a strategy views and represents an under-actuated mechanical system as a fully actuated system with virtually added inputs and outputs having to satisfy, through a suitable choice of the virtual output reference signals, the virtual input zero-equality constraint: the related adaptive tracking control problem is then solved through standard design techniques. This paper exhibits a twofold aim. The first one is: to enlarge the concept of zero-input constraint and thus naturally adapt the virtual control approach to the case in which an actuator fault can occur. The second aim is: to show how the application and transposition of such an adaptation to two well-known classes of nonlinear systems (special systems in multi-variable tracking form with two inputs and outputs under actuator faults; one-relative-degree, single-input, single-output systems in output feedback form under input saturation) not only own strong connections with the conditioning technique, originally conceived in the context of anti-windup problems under input constraints, but they also gain original results.