Nonlinear state feedback controller design for underactuated mechanical system: a modified block backstepping approach.

This paper presents the formulation of a novel block-backstepping based control algorithm to address the stabilization problem for a generalized nonlinear underactuated mechanical system. For the convenience of compact design, first, the state model of the underactuated system has been converted into the block-strict feedback form. Next, we have incorporated backstepping control action to derive the expression of the control input for the generic nonlinear underactuated system.