Disturbance-Observer-Based Control and Related Methods—An Overview

Disturbance-observer-based control (DOBC) and related methods have been researched and applied in various industrial sectors in the last four decades. This survey, at first time, gives a systematic and comprehensive tutorial and summary on the existing disturbance/uncertainty estimation and attenuation techniques, most notably, DOBC, active disturbance rejection control, disturbance accommodation control, and composite hierarchical antidisturbance control. In all of these methods, disturbance and uncertainty are, in general, lumped together, and an observation mechanism is employed to estimate the total disturbance. This paper first reviews a number of widely used linear and nonlinear disturbance/uncertainty estimation techniques and then discusses and compares various compensation techniques and the procedures of integrating disturbance/uncertainty compensation with a (predesigned) linear/nonlinear controller. It also provides concise tutorials of the main methods in this area with clear descriptions of their features. The application of this group of methods in various industrial sections is reviewed, with emphasis on the commercialization of some algorithms. The survey is ended with the discussion of future directions.