Cascaded feedback linearization and its application to stabilization of nonholonomic systems

In this paper, a new cascaded feedback linearization problem is formulated and a set of conditions on the cascaded feedback linearizability are established for a class of two-input affine nonlinear systems. The proposed cascaded feedback linearization method enlarges the classes of nonlinear systems which can be tackled by using the standard feedback linearization techniques. As an illustrative application, the proposed cascade feedback linearization concept is employed to solve the feedback stabilization problem of nonholonomic systems within the framework of smooth feedback control. Simulation results have verified the proposed method