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Hybrid automata provide a language for modeling and analyzing digital and analogue computations in real-time systems. Hybrid automata are studied here from a dynamical systems perspective. Necessary and sufficient conditions for existence and uniqueness of solutions are derived and a class of hybrid automata whose solutions depend continuously on the initial state is characterized. The results on existence, uniqueness, and continuity serve as a starting point for stability analysis. Lyapunov's theorem on stability via linearization and LaSalle's invariance principle are generalized to hybrid automata. Index Terms--Continuity of solutions, dynamical systems; existence, LaSalle's principle, Lyapunov's indirect method, hybrid systems, uniqueness.

In this paper, we investigate methods for steering systems with nonholonomic constraints between arbitrary configurations. Early work by Brockett derives the optimal controls for a set of canonical systems in which the tangent space to the configuration manifold is spanned by the input vector fields and their first order Lie brackets. Using Brockett's result as motivation, we derive suboptimal trajectories for systems which are not in canonical form and consider systems in which it takes more than one level of bracketing to achieve controllability. These trajectories use sinusoids at integrally related frequencies to achieve motion at a given bracketing level. We define a class of systems which can be steered using sinusoids (chained systems) and give conditions under which a class of two-input systems can be converted into this form.