Motion planning for controllable systems without drift

A general strategy for solving the motion planning problem for real analytic, controllable systems without drift is proposed. The procedure starts by computing a control that steers the given initial point to the desired target point for an extended system, in which a number of Lie brackets of the system vector fields are added. Using formal calculations with a product expansion relative to P. Hall basis, another control is produced that achieves the desired result on the formal level. This provides an exact solution of the original problem if the given system is nilpotent. For a general system, an iterative algorithm is derived that converges very quickly to a solution. For nonnilpotent systems which are feedback nilpotentizable, the algorithm, in cascade with a precompensator, produces an exact solution. Results of simulations which illustrate the effectiveness of the procedure are presented