Feedback Linearization

Feedback Linearization is a nonlinear control technique that uses a nonlinear state-feedback transformation to convert a nonlinear system into a linear one, enabling the use of standard linear control methods. Developed by Isidori, Sontag, and others in the 1980s, feedback linearization is conceptually elegant and powerful: if the system satisfies certain structural conditions (relative degree, decoupling matrix rank), the nonlinearities can be exactly cancelled through feedback, reducing the problem to linear design.