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Explained Linear and Nonlinear Systems

The document discusses the difference between linear and nonlinear systems. Linear systems are those where inputs and outputs are directly proportional, while nonlinear systems have outputs that are not directly proportional to inputs. Many scientific fields try to find linear approximations of nonlinear behaviors because linear systems are much easier to solve than nonlinear ones. However, nonlinear systems are more common in nature. The distinction between linear and nonlinear phenomena is important across many disciplines.

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54 views

Explained Linear and Nonlinear Systems

The document discusses the difference between linear and nonlinear systems. Linear systems are those where inputs and outputs are directly proportional, while nonlinear systems have outputs that are not directly proportional to inputs. Many scientific fields try to find linear approximations of nonlinear behaviors because linear systems are much easier to solve than nonlinear ones. However, nonlinear systems are more common in nature. The distinction between linear and nonlinear phenomena is important across many disciplines.

Uploaded by

Boudaoud Family
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Explained: Linear and nonlinear

systems
Much scientific research across a range of
disciplines tries to find linear approximations of
nonlinear behaviors. But what does that mean?
Larry Hardesty, MIT News Office 
February 26, 2010
Spend some time browsing around the web site of MIT’s Computer Science and

Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and you’ll find hundreds if not thousands of documents

with titles like “On Modeling Nonlinear Shape-and-Texture Appearance Manifolds” and

“Non-linear Drawing systems,” or, on the contrary, titles like “Packrat Parsing: Simple,

Powerful, Lazy, Linear Time” and “Linear-Time-Encodable and List-Decodable Codes.”

The distinction between linear and nonlinear phenomena is everywhere in the sciences

and engineering. But what exactly does it mean?

Suppose that, without much effort, you can toss a tennis ball at about 20 miles per hour.

Now suppose that you’re riding a bicycle at 10 miles per hour and toss a tennis ball

straight ahead. The ball will travel forward at 30 miles per hour. Linearity is, essentially,

the idea that combining two inputs — like the velocity of your arm and the velocity of the

bike — will yield the sum of their respective outputs — the velocity of the ball.

Now suppose that, instead of tossing a tennis ball, you toss a paper airplane.

Depending on the airplane’s design, it might sail straight ahead, or it might turn loops.

Some paper planes seem to behave more erratically the harder you throw them: the

bike’s added velocity might make it almost impossible to get the plane to do anything

predictable. That’s because airflow over a paper plane’s wings can be very nonlinear.
If the bicycle had built-in sensors and an onboard computer, it could calculate the

velocity of the tennis ball in a fraction of a second. But it could never hope to calculate

all the airflows over the paper plane’s wing in time to do anything useful. “I think that it’s

a reasonable statement that we mostly understand linear phenomena,” says Pablo

Parrilo, the Finmeccanica Career Development Professor of Engineering MIT’s

Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems.

To make the distinction between linearity and nonlinearity a bit more precise, recall that

a mathematical equation can be thought of as a function — something that maps inputs

to outputs. The equation y = x, for instance, is equivalent to a function that takes as its

input a value for x and produces as its output a value for y. The same is true of y = x 2.

The equation y = x is linear because adding together inputs yields the sum of their

respective outputs: 1 = 1, 2 = 2, and 1 + 2 = 1 + 2. But that’s not true of y = x 2: if x is 1, y

is 1; if x is 2, y is 4; but if x is 3, y is not 5.

This example illustrates the origin of the term “linear”: the graph of y = x is a straight

line, while the graph of y = x2 is a curve. But the basic definition of linearity holds for

much more complicated equations, such as the differential equations used in

engineering to describe dynamic systems.

While linear functions are easy enough to define, the term “nonlinear” takes in

everything else. “There’s this famous quote — I’m not sure who said it first — that the

theory of nonlinear systems is like a theory of non-elephants,” Parrilo says. “It’s

impossible to build a theory of nonlinear systems, because arbitrary things can satisfy

that definition.” Because linear equations are so much easier to solve than nonlinear
ones, much research across a range of disciplines is devoted to finding linear

approximations of nonlinear phenomena.

Russ Tedrake, for example, the X Consortium Associate Professor of Electrical

Engineering and Computer Science at MIT, has adapted theoretical work done by

Parrilo to create novel control systems for robots. A walking robot’s gait could be the

result of a number of mechanical systems working together in a nonlinear way. The

collective forces exerted by all those systems might be impossible to calculate on the

fly. But within a narrow range of starting conditions, a linear equation might describe

them well enough for practical purposes. Parrilo’s theoretical tools allow Tedrake to

determine how well a given linear approximation will work within how wide a range of

starting conditions. His control system thus consists of a whole battery of linear control

equations, one of which is selected depending on the current state of the robot.

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