On The Teaching of Nonlinear Control: Challenges and Ideas

This letter discusses the teaching of nonlinear control courses at the graduate level with emphasis on control design, presenting the views of the author about some of the challenges that the discipline is facing. The main concern raised in this letter is the current focus of the discipline on problems of equilibrium stabilization, both in teaching and research. The author contends that this focus is detrimental and it limits the perceived relevance of nonlinear control courses to graduate students working in other areas. The author proposes that changing the focus of graduate courses to problems of set stabilization may allow the teacher to better motivate nonlinear control concepts with exciting examples, while at the same time establishing connections with other disciplines. A sample lecture and assignment are presented illustrating the ideas put forward in this letter.