Control analysis and synthesis for general control-affine systems

Abstract

We study controllability and constructive synthesis for control-affine systems. We introduce trajectory-dependent Gramian maps that extend the linear time-varying Gramian and yield explicit fixed-point synthesis maps. On feasible coercivity classes (uniform eigenvalue lower bounds), the Gramian map is Lipschitz, synthesis iterates exhibit factorial decay, and the Caccioppoli fixed point theorem gives a unique fixed point that steers the system and satisfies an energy identity. When, in addition, an orthogonality condition holds, this fixed point coincides with the unique global minimum-energy control on the feasible set; if the coercivity bound holds uniformly for all bounded controls, the same conclusion holds on the full bounded-control space. We provide structural conditions on the input matrix that ensure the nonemptiness of the feasible class (and, in fully actuated regimes, equality with the full space) and sufficient conditions for underactuated systems via bounded-amplitude reference controls. Case studies on Hopfield network dynamics illustrate refined estimates that enlarge reachable targets. A trajectory-freezing and compactness step extends the synthesis to general nonlinear control-affine systems. The results yield verifiable controllability criteria with explicit, numerically implementable controllers.