EQUIVALENCE OF NONLINEAR-SYSTEMS TO INPUT-OUTPUT PRIME FORMS

The problem of transforming nonlinear control systems into input-outpu t prime forms is dealt with, using state space. static state feedback, and also output transformations. Necessary and sufficient geometric c onditions for the solvability of this problem are obtained. The result s obtained generalize well-known results both on feedback linearizatio n as well as input-output decoupling of nonlinear systems. It turns ou t that, from a computational point of view, the output space transform ation is the crucial step, that is performed by constructing rectifyin g coordinates for a nested sequence of distributions on the output man ifold.