A condition for the stability of switched nonlinear systems

In this paper, we present a sufficient condition for the global asymptotic stability of a switched nonlinear system composed of a finite family of subsystems. We show that the global asymptotic stability of each subsystem and the pairwise commutation of the vector fields that define the subsystems (i.e., the Lie bracket of any pair of them is zero) are sufficient for the global asymptotic stability of the switched system. We also show that these conditions are sufficient for the existence of a common Lyapunov function.