Stabilization of systems with changing dynamics by means of switching

We present a framework for designing stable control schemes for systems whose dynamics change. The idea is to develop a controller for each of the regions defined by different dynamic characteristics and design a switching scheme that guarantees the stability of the overall system. We derive sufficient conditions for the stability of the switching scheme for systems evolving on a sequence of embedded manifolds. An important feature of the proposed framework is that if the conditions are satisfied by pairs of controllers adjacent in the hierarchy, the overall system will be stable. This makes the application of our results particularly straight forward. The methodology is applied to stabilization of a shimmying wheel, where changes in the dynamic behaviour are due to switches between sliding and rolling.