Provably Safe Control for Constrained Nonlinear Systems with Bounded Input

Abstract

In real-world control applications, actuator constraints and output constraints (specifically in tracking problems) are inherent and critical to ensuring safe and reliable operation. However, generally, control strategies often neglect these physical limitations, leading to potential instability, degraded performance, or even system failure when deployed on real-world systems. This paper addresses the control design problem for a class of nonlinear systems under both actuator saturation and output constraints. First, a smooth asymmetric saturation model (a more generic representative of practical scenarios) is proposed to model actuator saturation, which ensures that the control inputs always remain confined within a predefined set to ensure safety. Based on the proposed model, we develop a nonlinear control framework that guarantees output tracking while ensuring that system output remains confined to the predefined set. Later, we integrate this design with the constrained output tracking control problem, wherein we show that the system output tracks its desired trajectory by simultaneously satisfying input and output constraints. The global stabilization of the tracking error is achieved in the presence of input constraints, while semi-global stabilization is achieved in the presence of both input and output constraints. Additionally, we rigorously establish the boundedness of all closed-loop signals under the proposed design. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods in handling asymmetric constraints while achieving desirable tracking performance.