Controllability of discrete-time inhomogeneous bilinear systems with real spectrum: Algebraically verifiable criteria

One of the drawbacks of the controllability theory for nonlinear systems is that most existing controllability criteria are not algebraically verifiable, which makes them difficult to apply especially if the system dimension is high. Thus, it is a significant task to seek algebraically verifiable controllability criteria for nonlinear systems. In this paper, we study controllability of discrete-time inhomogeneous bilinear systems. In the classical results on controllability of such systems, a necessary condition is that the linear part has to be controllable. However, we will show that this condition is in fact not necessary for controllability. Specifically, we first define the spectrum for discrete-time inhomogeneous bilinear systems and reveal that the spectrum is a fundamental property which is very useful in investigating the controllability problems. We then present controllability criteria for the systems with real spectrum, which are algebraically verifiable. Furthermore, we also provide algorithms for the controllable systems to compute the exact or approximated control inputs to achieve the transition between any given pair of states. The presented controllability criteria and algorithms work for the systems in any finite dimension and are easy to implement. More importantly, through our controllability criteria, we reveal that controllability of the linear part is not necessary for discrete-time inhomogeneous bilinear systems to be controllable. Examples are given to illustrate the presented algebraic controllability criteria.