{"paper":{"title":"Ignore Drift, Embrace Simplicity: Constrained Nonlinear Control through Driftless Approximation","license":"http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":["cs.SY","eess.SY"],"primary_cat":"math.OC","authors_text":"Melkior Ornik, Ram Padmanabhan","submitted_at":"2025-09-07T19:49:03Z","abstract_excerpt":"We present a novel technique to drive a nonlinear system to reach a target state under input constraints. The proposed controller consists only of piecewise constant inputs, generated from a simple linear driftless approximation to the original nonlinear system. First, we construct this approximation using only the effect of the control input at the initial state. Next, we partition the time horizon into successively shorter intervals and show that optimal controllers for the linear driftless system result in a bounded error from a specified target state in the nonlinear system. We also derive"},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"2509.06188","kind":"arxiv","version":2},"verdict":{"id":null,"model_set":{},"created_at":null,"strongest_claim":"","one_line_summary":"","pipeline_version":null,"weakest_assumption":"","pith_extraction_headline":""},"integrity":{"clean":true,"summary":{"advisory":0,"critical":0,"by_detector":{},"informational":0},"endpoint":"/pith/2509.06188/integrity.json","findings":[],"available":true,"detectors_run":[],"snapshot_sha256":"c28c3603d3b5d939e8dc4c7e95fa8dfce3d595e45f758748cecf8e644a296938"},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}