Model Reference Adaptive Control for Agriculture Application

A new approach to adaptive model reference control, based on MIT rule is presented. Modern agricultural machines happen to work for prolonged periods of time in considerably harsh environments. This puts a higher demand on the automatic control systems and steering control in particular. Long-term machine operation leads to variance of the physical parameters of the working fluid, positive overlap in proportional valve, working temperature and machine components. In this paper we will be discussing about Model Reference Adaptive control (MRAC) which is an approach to solve real world problems related to Adaptive Control. The present research is focused on the design and application of model reference adaptive controller (MRAC) for control of steering angle of a heavy duty agriculture mobile machine through a hydraulic cylinder. The synthesized controller is based on simple integrator model of the steering cylinder and Lyapunov stability theorems. The closed-loop system achieves good performance and the adaptive gain is stabilized around its mean value too.