Carathéodory Controllability Criterion for Nonlinear Dynamical Systems

Abstract

The question of whether a system is controllable or not is of prime importance in modern control theory and has been actively researched in recent years. While it is a solved problem for linear systems, it is still an open question when dealing with bilinear and nonlinear systems. In this paper, a controllability criterion is established based on a theorem by Carathéodory. By associating a given dynamical system with a certain Pfaffian equation, it is argued that the system is controllable (uncontrollable) if its associated Pfaffian form is nonintegrable (integrable).