Planning and optimization of dynamic systems via decomposition and partial feedback linearization

State-space exact linearization has been found to be an invaluable tool for feasible and optimal planning of dynamic systems due to its potential to reduce complex nonlinear systems to rather simple linear ones. However, many systems do not fulfil the conditions of state-space exact linearization but may admit only partially linear forms, when a part of the dynamics is linearizable while the remaining “internal” dynamics stays nonlinear. In this paper, we address a special class of partially linearizable systems for which the internal dynamics is completely independent. Such systems are locally uncontrollable, but the problem of optimum planning can be elegantly solved using higher-order forms