Data-driven control

• Guardabassi, G.O., and S.M. Savaresi. “Virtual Reference Direct Design Method: An off-Line Approach to Data-Based Control System Design.” IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control 45, no. 5 (May 2000): 954–59. https://doi.org/10.1109/9.855559

but a more theoretically polished form came in

• Campi, M.C., and S.M. Savaresi. “Direct Nonlinear Control Design: The Virtual Reference Feedback Tuning (VRFT) Approach.” IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control 51, no. 1 (January 2006): 14–27. https://doi.org/10.1109/TAC.2005.861689.

Quite a few more papers followed (extensions to nonminimum phase plants, nonlinear plants, ...) but these two papers are certainly enough to get started.

A description of an application of the VRFT method in the automotive industry (ABS design) is

• Formentin, Simone, Pierpaolo De Filippi, Matteo Corno, Mara Tanelli, and Sergio M. Savaresi. “Data-Driven Design of Braking Control Systems.” IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology 21, no. 1 (January 2013): 186–93. https://doi.org/10.1109/TCST.2011.2171965.