The purpose of this book is to present a self-contained description of
the fun- damentals of the theory of nonlinear control systems, with
special emphasis on the differential geometric approach. The book is
intended as a graduate text as weil as a reference to scientists and
engineers involved in the analysis and design of feedback systems. The
first version of this book was written in 1983, while I was teach- ing
at the Department of Systems Science and Mathematics at Washington
University in St. Louis. This new edition integrates my subsequent
teaching experience gained at the University of Illinois in
Urbana-Champaign in 1987, at the Carl-Cranz Gesellschaft in
Oberpfaffenhofen in 1987, at the University of California in Berkeley in
1988. In addition to a major rearrangement of the last two Chapters of
the first version, this new edition incorporates two additional Chapters
at a more elementary level and an exposition of some relevant research
findings which have occurred since 1985.