Nonlinear Systems

Most of the control theory you've seen so far quietly assumes superposition and a working transfer function, which falls apart the moment you have saturation, friction, or a pendulum that swings past small angles — this course is about the tools that survive that breakdown. You'll spend the semester sketching phase portraits, hunting limit cycles via describing functions, constructing Lyapunov functions to prove stability without ever solving the ODE, and working through input-output arguments like the small-gain and circle criteria, before closing on sliding mode and feedback linearization. It sits downstream of EEE 432-style linear control and is the bridge to robust, adaptive, and modern nonlinear control work, taught largely from Slotine & Li with three written exams.