IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, Vol.40, No.8, 1488-1491, 1995
Robust Asymptotic Stabilizability of Petersens Counterexample via a Linear Static Controller
A stabilizing linear static controller is discovered for a linear time-varying uncertain system of Petersen. We use the concept of a sandwich cone decomposition to show that Petersen’s system is stabilizable by linear static controllers, We establish the surprising result that Petersen’s system is stabilizable against time-varying uncertainties on any given compact subset of the uncertainty controllability space. Our work suggests the use of "sealar-quadratic" Lyapunov functions, a special subclass of polyhedral Lyapunov functions, in establishing stability for other linear time-varying uncertain systems, and it reopens the study of the conjecture : stabilizability via nonlinear control always implies stabilizability via linear control.