Norm-Controllability of Nonlinear Systems

In this paper, we introduce and study the notion of norm-controllability for nonlinear systems. This property captures the responsiveness of a system with respect to applied inputs, which is quantified via the norm of an output. As a main contribution, we obtain several Lyapunov-like sufficient conditions for norm-controllability, some of which are based on higher-order derivatives of a Lyapunov-like function. Various aspects of the proposed concept and the sufficient conditions are illustrated by several examples, including a chemical reactor application. Furthermore, for the special case of linear systems, we establish connections between norm-controllability and standard controllability.