Searching for Control Lyapunov Functions using Sums of Squares Programming

Construction of a Control Lyapunov Function (CLF) for a nonlinear system is generally a difficult problem, but once a CLF is found, stabilization of the system is straight-forward. In this paper, we present an algorithm that searches for CLFs for polynomial systems that are affine in control using sums of squares programming. We also present an algorithm for searching local CLFs for the same class of nonlinear system when global asymptotic stabilization is not possible.