Abstract: Adaptive control for a wide variety of complex processes is provided by an ANN controller with input and hidden layers having a plurality of neurons, and an output layer with a single neuron. The inputs to the ANN are a time sequence of error values, and the neuron paths are weighted as a function of these error values and the present-time process output. The present-time error value may be added to the output layer of the ANN to provide faster response to sudden input changes. The controller of this invention can efficiently handle processes with nonlinear, time-varying, coupled and variable-structure behaviors as well as process parameter and/or structure uncertainties. Large steady-state gains in the process can be compensated by attenuating the ANN block output.