Appendices: pages 361-423.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 427-461) and indexes.

Tracking is the goal of control of any object, plant, process, or vehicle. From vehicles and missiles to power plants, tracking is essential to guarantee high-quality behavior. Nonlinear Systems Tracking establishes the tracking theory, trackability theory, and tracking control synthesis for time-varying nonlinear plants and their control systems as parts of control theory. Treating general dynamical and control systems, including subclasses of input-output and state-space nonlinear systems describes the crucial tracking control concepts that comprise effective tracking control algorithms, defines the main tracking and trackability properties involved, identifying properties both perfect and imperfect, details the corresponding conditions needed for the controlled plant to exhibit each property, discusses various algorithms for tracking control synthesis, attacking the tracking control synthesis problems themselves, and, depicts the effective synthesis of the tracking control, under the action of which, the plant behavior satisfies all the imposed tracking requirements resulting from its purpose. With clarity and precision, Nonlinear Systems Tracking provides original coverage, presenting discovery and proofs of new tracking criteria and control algorithms. Thus, the book creates new directions for research in control theory, enabling fruitful new control engineering applications.

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