A quotient method for designing nonlinear controllers

An algorithmic method is proposed to design stabilizing control laws for a class of nonlinear systems that comprises single-input feedback-linearizable systems and a particular set of single-input non feedback-linearizable systems. The method proceeds iteratively and consists of two stages; it converts the system into cascade form and reduces the dimension at every step by creating quotient manifold in the forward stage, while it constructs the feedback law iteratively in the backward stage. The paper shows that the construction of these quotient manifolds is well defined for feedback-linearizable system and, furthermore, it can also be applied to a class of non feedback-linearizable systems.