Exponential stabilization of nonlinear driftless systems with robustness to unmodeled dynamics

Exponential stabilization of nonlinear driftless affine control systems is addressed with the concern of achieving robustness with respect to imperfect knowledge of the system's control vector fields. In order to satisfy this robustness requirement, and inspired by Bennani and Rouchon [1] where the same issue was first addressed, we consider a control strategy which consists in applying periodically updated open-loop controls that are continuous with respect to state initial conditions. These controllers are more precisely described as continuous time-periodic feedbacks associated with a specific dynamic extension of the original system. Sufficient conditions which, if they are satisfied by the control law, ensure that the control is a robust exponential stabilizer for the extended system are given. Explicit and simple control expressions which satisfy these conditions in the case of n-dimensional chained systems are proposed. A constructive algorithm for the design of such control laws, which applies to any (sufficiently regular) driftless control system, is described