High-order fully actuated system approaches: Part I. Models and basic procedure

The state-space approaches have stayed in an absolutely dominant position in the field of systems and control for over a half century. Although a state-space representation is more suitable for deriving the state-response solution and observation (estimation), it does not provide as much convenience as desired for the control problem. In this paper, the concept of high-order fully actuated (HOFA) systems is firstly revisited, and it is pointed out that HOFA systems serve really as models for control systems rather than representing a small portion of physical control systems. Based on the HOFA model, a basic procedure is proposed for control of nonlinear systems satisfying certain conditions, whose first step converts the nonlinear systems into a pseudo strict-feedback system, and the second step establishes the HOFA model of the system. Once an HOFA model is derived, a controller can be immediately designed to make the closed-loop system a constant linear one with a desired eigenstructure. All the design degrees of freedom existing in the closed-loop system are also provided, which can be further utilised to achieve additional system performance. An example demonstrates the design procedure and shows the effect of the proposed HOFA approach.