NONLINEAR CONTROL

Ingeniería de Control III

 Examples of Exact Linearization
• Example: Exact Linearization of a Mechanical System
• Consider the system of Figure. Let x1 be the position of the cart
that moves with the velocity x2.
• We assume that the spring force is described by a nonlinear
function (x1) of the position and that the damper force is a
nonlinear function (x2) of the velocity.
• The system is then described by the equations.
• This is a nonlinear system. The special structure means, however, that
it is simple to find a feedback that compensates for the nonlinearities.

• If r is a reference signal, we can use

giving the closed loop system

• This is a linear relation between reference signal and position. By

choosing the coefficients a1 and a2 we can get any desired pole
placement.

• The example we gave is very special. We shall look at a case where it

is not as obvious how to compensate for the nonlinearity.
Example: Speed Control of Aircraft
• We will consider a highly simplified model of speed control for
an aircraft. Let the speed be x1 and the thrust of the engine mx2
where m is the mass of the aircraft.
• Let the aerodynamic drag be given by the nonlinear function
mD(x1).
• The relationship between force and acceleration for the aircraft
then gives

• Let the desired thrust be the input u to the system. We assume

that the engine responds with a certain time constant, giving
• A state space description of the system is thus

• Now, it is not possible to compensate directly for the

nonlinearity D(x1), by choosing u, since those quantities are not
in the same equation.
Relative Degree
• We must first decide what nonlinearities to consider. It turns out
to be useful to assume the system to be in control affine form

where f, g and h are infinitely differentiable functions.

• The state x is assumed to be a vector with n components, while
u and y are scalars.
• We allow essentially arbitrary nonlinearities in the state but
assume a simple affine dependence in u.
Relative Degree
• Obviously y does not depend explicitly on u, since u is not
explicitly present in h.

• If u is changed instantaneously there will be no immediate

change in y; the change comes gradually via x.

• To check the corresponding behavior of y we can differentiate

the output equation.
Relative Degree
• We then get

where

which can he written

• Here we have suppressed the x-dependence in the notation.

• We see that y depends directly on u, at least for some values of
x, if and only if
Relative Degree
• We will say that the system has relative degree 1 if

• Now assume that Differentiating once more we get

• The system is said to have relative degree 2 if

• In that case
y depends directly on u.
• Otherwise we can continue differentiating.
Relative Degree
• It is useful to introduce some notation for the repeated
differentiations.
• Introduce the partial differential operators

• L f is called the Lie-derivative in the direction of f.

• Letting v denote the relative degree, we can rewrite our
calculations as follows
Relative Degree
• Definition The relative degree v is the least positive integer
such that

• Definition A system has strong relative degree v if the relative

degree is v and furthermore
Input-Output Linearization
• Consider a system with strong relative degree v.
• From the definition and computations of the previous section
we have

• We see an interesting possibility: introduce the feedback

• This is possible since

• The resulting relationship is from reference signal to

output.
Input-Output Linearization
• There is unfortunately a disadvantage in this methodology,
which becomes clear with a change of variables.
• Let us introduce the new variable
Input-Output Linearization
• Remarks
• Even if the choice of the last components of z is essentially
arbitrary, it must of course be done so that  becomes invertible,
i.e. it must be possible to compute x for a given z.

• It is possible to show that this can be done, at least locally in

the state space.
Input-Output Linearization
Input-Output Linearization
• The linearizing feedback is
Input-Output Linearization
• We see that the whole system has not been linearized. There is
possibly still some nonlinear dynamics affecting the state
variables

• This dynamics is not visible in the output and is called the zero
dynamics of the system.
• If one performs the calculations above for a linear system, it is
possible to show that the poles of the zero dynamics equals the
zeros of the transfer function from u to y.
• It is natural to view instability of the zero dynamics as a
generalization of the concept of non-minimum phase to
nonlinear systems.
Exact State Linearization
• We note that the potential problems with the zero dynamics disappear if v = n. This is
such an important special case that it deserves a theorem.
Exact state linearization
• This form of feedback is called exact state linearization or just exact
linearization.
• Remark 1. A natural variation is to use the feedback,

where the ai are chosen to give a good pole placement.

• Remark 2. It is not obvious that one should aim at a linear dynamics.

• A more general feedback would be

replacing the nonlinear function  e by another arbitrary function  .
One could thus try to replace "bad" nonlinearities by "good"
nonlinearities.

• Remark 3. This description is often regarded as a controller

canonical form for nonlinear systems.
• Now suppose we have a system with relative degree v < n. We can
argue as follows: since we have to use a feedback from all state
variables, we can regard some other function of the state as output.

• This alternative output can then be chosen so that the relative degree
is n. Denote the new output

• We see that the function c has to satisfy

• This is a system of partial differential equations for the function c.

• One can show that sometimes lacks a solution. Even when a solution
exists, it is not certain that it can be calculated explicitly. Here we find
a definite limit for the use of exact linearization.