High Gain Feedback and Telerobotic Tracking

Asymptotically stable linear time invariant systems are capable of tracking arbitrary reference signals with a bounded error proportional to the magnitude of the reference signal (and its derivatives). It is shown that a similar property holds for a general class of nonlinear dynamical systems which includes all robots. As in the linear case, the error bound may be made “arbitrarily” small by increasing the magnitude of the feedback gains which stabilize the system.