1986

New results are given on the pole-shifting problem for commutative rings, and these are then applied to conclude that rings of continuous, smooth, or real-analytic functions on a manifold X are PA rings if and only if X is one-dimensional.

We present various comments on a question about systems over rings posed in a recent note by Sharma, proving that a ring R is pole-assignable if and only if, for every reachable system (F,G), G contains a rank-one summand of the state space. We also provide a generalization to deal with dynamic feedback.

This paper studies time-optimal control questions for a certain class of nonlinear systems. This class includes a large number of mechanical systems, in particular, rigid robotic manipulators with torque constraints. As nonlinear systems, these systems have many properties that are false for generic systems of the same dimensions.

This paper proposes a notion of smooth action on a manifold, and establishes a general integrability result for certain associated distributions. As corollaries, various classical and new results on manifold structures of orbits are established, and the main theorem on preservation of transitivity under sampling is shown to be a simple consequence.

A controller is shown to exist, universal for the family of all systems of fixed dimension n, and m controls, which stabilizes those systems that are stabilizable, if certain gains are large enough. The controller parameters are continuous, in fact polynomial, functions of the entries of the plant. As a consequence, a result is proved on polynomial stabilization of families of systems.

Weak controllability of bilinear systems is preserved under sampling provided that the sampling period satisfies a condition related to the eigenvalues of the autonomous dynamics matrix. This condition generalizes the classical Kalman-Ho-Narendra criterion which is well known in the linear case.