Abstract

this paper is as follows: in Section 2, we collect some mathematical preliminaries from the literature on controllability of nonlinear systems and on classification of free Lie algebras. These are drawn from classical references in control theory [4, 17, 18, 36, 40] and Lie algebras [15, 43]. In Section 3, using some outstanding results of Brockett on optimal steering of certain classes of systems as motivation [5], we discuss the use of sinusoidal inputs for steering systems of first order, i.e., systems where controllability is achieved after just one level of Lie brackets of the input vector fields. Section 4 attempts to expand the domain of applicability of these results to more complex systems, where several orders of Lie brackets are needed to obtain the full Lie algebra associated with the input distribution. The 4 MURRAY AND SASTRY

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