Alan Williams
Classical extremum seeking (ES) is commonly interpreted as approximating gradient descent, but this interpretation is less clear for nonsmooth objectives in the continuous-time multivariable setting. We propose a minimal modification of the classical multivariable perturbation--demodulation architecture: rationally independent perturbation frequencies and matched demodulation signals. For any locally Lipschitz static objective, the Kronecker--Weyl theorem shows that, at every fixed perturbation amplitude, the long-time averaged dynamics are exactly the negative gradient of a kernel-smoothed objective. Because rationally independent frequencies render the perturbation and demodulation signals nonperiodic, we employ general averaging theory rather than periodic averaging theory. If the gradient flow of the smoothed objective is globally uniformly asymptotically stable, then the ES dynamics are practically globally uniformly asymptotically stable. We also derive a general matching condition relating the perturbation occupation density, demodulation signal, and smoothing kernel, yielding a family of alternative designs. Numerical examples include a nonsmooth objective function, which may be interpreted as the penalty function of a nonlinear program, and the Rastrigin function, for which smoothing eliminates all undesired local minima.