ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the design of controllers for nonlinear systems. The availability of increasingly more powerful and less expensive microprocessors and the need for better performance stimulated control engineers to design innovative nonlinear control algorithms for advanced applications, such as robotics and aerospace. In these applications, nonlinearities such as Coriolis forces and inertial forces play a significant role and can be exactly modeled using well-known laws of physics. The chapter examines the design of controllers for nonlinear systems. At the beginning of the 1980s, generalizations of pole placement and observer design techniques for nonlinear systems were obtained using tools from differential geometry. The chapter looks at a simple example to understand the working of the technique. It also explores a design technique that has, in all likelihood, attracted a vast majority of engineers as well as researchers.
