Incremental passivity and output tracking of switched nonlinear systems

Abstract

This article studies incremental passivity and the output tracking problem for switched nonlinear systems. The concept of incremental passivity for switched systems is given using the proposed weak-storage functions. Furthermore, conditions for a switched nonlinear system to be incrementally passive are obtained without the requirement of the incremental passivity conditions for subsystems. It is shown that once the incremental passivity is assured, the output tracking problem for switched systems is solvable via the designed controllers, even though the problem for none of subsystems is solvable.

Keywords:

• switched nonlinear systems
• output tracking
• incremental passivity
• multiple storage functions

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant Nos. 61174073 and 90816028.