Active Disturbance Rejection Control: Theory, Design, and Applications in Advanced Actuation Systems

Dear Colleagues,

The growing complexity of modern engineering systems demands robust control strategies capable of maintaining performance in the presence of uncertainties, nonlinearities, and external disturbances. Active Disturbance Rejection Control (ADRC) has emerged as a powerful, model-independent control framework that achieves this by estimating and actively compensating for total disturbances in real time. Over the past two decades, ADRC has seen significant theoretical advancements and a broadening range of applications, spanning robotics, power systems, process control, aerospace, and biomedical systems. Recent research has emphasized improved observer and controller design, stability and robustness analysis, tuning methodologies, and the integration of ADRC with data-driven or AI-enhanced techniques. Practical implementations have also addressed challenges related to digital realization, sensor limitations, and real-time computational efficiency.

This Special Issue aims to showcase original research and review articles that reflect the state of the art in ADRC, highlighting new theoretical developments, practical innovations, and application-driven studies. We welcome contributions that advance the understanding or implementation of ADRC across diverse domains, including both simulation-based and experimental work. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, observer design, control synthesis, tuning strategies, hybrid methods, robustness analysis, and emerging applications. Papers exploring interdisciplinary approaches or novel uses of ADRC in challenging control scenarios are particularly encouraged.

Dr. Yan Wu
Prof. Dr. Seenith Sivasundaram
Dr. Thomas Yang
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Actuators is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.