Exploitation of Chaos for Active Control: An Experiment

We have implemented a control scheme to exploit chaotic behavior in a physical system. The method of control requires only small time-dependent perturbations of a single system parameter and does not require model equations for the dynamics. We have demonstrated the power of the method by controlling an experimental chaotic system around unstable periodic orbits and exploiting the underlying chaos to switch the motion between these orbits at will. The robustness of the method is tested by adding white noise to our experimental system during control to obtain information on the effect of noise on control failures.