Extremum seeking control (ESC) is an adaptive control method that seeks the control signal that finds a local maximum for an objective function. The basic idea behind this method is that a system is perturbed with a slowly varying periodic signal and then by observing the output of the system and comparing it to the perturbation signal the gradient of the objective function can be estimated. The gradient is ascended pushing the control signal further in the direction of the local maximum.
See More