Summary
In this paper, the adaptive control problem for a class of switched nontriangular nonlinear systems is investigated, which allows the control gains to vanish at some points. Neither the triangular structure nor the solvability of the adaptive control problem is required for each subsystem. A key point of this work is to solve the adaptive control problem of switched nontriangular nonlinear systems with vanishing control gains by the dual design of the controllers and switching signals. To this end, firstly, a hysteresis‐type control gains‐dependent switching law is designed, which makes the control gain of the active subsystem not vanish and thus the associated designed control input can enter into the active subsystem. Moreover, the designed switching law guarantees a dwell time between any adjacent switching instants, which rules out the Zeno behavior. Secondly, when the adaptive control problem of each subsystem is unsolvable, a sufficient condition ensuring the solvability of the adaptive control problem of switched nontriangular nonlinear systems is developed even if no control input can enter into subsystems at some points. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed result is illustrated by two examples.