A robust estimation of the exponent function in the Gompertz law

The estimation of the solution of a system of two differential equations introduced by Norton et al. [Predicting the course of Gompertzian growth, Nature 264 (1976) 542–544] that is equivalent to the famous Gompertz growth law is performed by means of the recent adaptive scheme of Besançon and collaborators [High gain observer based state and parameter estimation in nonlinear systems, paper 204, the sixth IFAC Symposium, Stuttgart Symposium on Nonlinear Control Systems (NOLCOS), 2004, available at 〈http://www.nolcos2004.uni-stuttgart.de〉]. Results of computer simulations illustrate the robustness of the approach.