On the Internal Stability and Robust Design of Globally Linearizing Control Systems

This work follows the global input/output linearization approach [10] for the design of control systems for nonlinear plants. Input/output linearizing state feedback is interpreted as cancelling the zero dynamics of a plant. As a result, the class of nonlinear systems that are internally stabilized via input-output linearizing feedback is completely characterized. Two alternative robust design approaches are proposed. One refers to unstructured uncertainty and extends linear results. The other considers uncertainty as a class of bounded perturbation to the state model and uses a Lyapunov-based approach to guarantee uniform ultimate boundedness.