Papers by M. Malisoff and E.D. Sontag

This paper shows that any globally asymptotically controllable system on any smooth manifold can be globally stabilized by a state feedback. Since discontinuous feedbacks are allowed, solutions are understood in the ``sample and hold'' sense introduced by Clarke-Ledyaev-Sontag-Subbotin (CLSS). This work generalizes the CLSS Theorem, which is the special case of our result for systems on Euclidean space. We apply our result to the input-to-state stabilization of systems on manifolds relative to actuator errors, under small observation noise.

The main problem addressed in this paper is the design of feedbacks for globally asymptotically controllable (GAC) control affine systems that render the closed loop systems input to state stable with respect to actuator errors. Extensions for fully nonlinear GAC systems with actuator errors are also discussed. Our controllers have the property that they tolerate small observation noise as well.

We discuss several issues related to the stabilizability of nonlinear systems. First, for continuously stabilizable systems, we review constructions of feedbacks that render the system input-to-state stable with respect to actuator errors. Then, we discuss a recent paper which provides a new feedback design that makes globally asymptotically controllable systems input-to-state stable to actuator errors and small observation noise. We illustrate our constructions using the nonholonomic integrator, and discuss a related feedback design for systems with disturbances.

This note provides explicit algebraic stabilizing formulas for clf's when controls are restricted to certain Minkowski balls in Euclidean space. Feedbacks of this kind are known to exist by a theorem of Artstein, but the proof of Artstein's theorem is nonconstructive. The formulas are obtained from a general feedback stabilization technique and are used to construct approximation solutions to some stabilization problems.