Fully Actuated System Approach for Control: An Overview

Fully actuated system (FAS) approach was proposed in 2020 and 2021 as a general framework for control system analysis and design based on a newly discovered general type of fully actuated models for dynamical systems. Due to its great advantages and power in dealing with complicated nonlinear time-varying and time-delay systems with possibly nonholonomic features, it has attracted much attention in the control community immediately since its birth. By now, numerous results have been produced for analysis and control of various types of complicated systems, which cover the topics of adaptive control, robust control, predictive control and fault-tolerant control, and involve time-varying and time-delay systems, discrete-time systems, stochastic systems and even impulsive systems. Meanwhile, a large number of applications have also been carried out. These include spacecraft control, aircraft and quadrotor control, robot control and control of power electronic systems and servo systems. In this article, an overview of the FAS approach is presented, ranging from models, basic theories, and control techniques to applications.