This research project addresses an important area in automatic control, namely, robust adaptive control. The primary goal is to draw a strong analogy between concepts from immunology and concepts from adaptive neurocontrol and to use this analogy to enhance the current practices in adaptive neurocontrol. Immunology is the science of in-built defense mechanism that is present in all living beings to protect them against external attacks. The science of immunology has many parallels to the robust adaptive control problem. This project assumes that there is a match between the concepts of neurocontrol, immunology, and genetic alogortihms, and if this match is properly understood, there is a great potential for scaling up current trends in adaptive neurocontrol. Objectives of the research are related to the actual realization of this match. Adaptive neurocontrol, if fully developed, could be successfully used in autonomous space explorations and robot planning, high performance aircraft/missile control, man-machine interaction, the national aerospace plane, and flexible structure control. Two of the above areas are proposed to be used to test the concepts presented in this proposal. These are: (a) adaptive control in man-machine interaction problems; and (2) robust adaptive control of a high performance aircraft. It is anticipated that these applications will bring out the essential features of the proposed immunized adaptive neurocontrol approach.
