High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! In control theory, backstepping is a technique developed circa 1990 by Petar V. Kokotovic and others for designing stabilizing controls for a special class of nonlinear dynamical systems. These systems are built from subsystems that radiate out from an irreducible subsystem that can be stabilized using some other method. Because of this recursive structure, the designer can start the design process at the known-stable system and "back out" new controllers that progressively stabilize each outer subsystem. The process terminates when the final external control is reached. Hence, this process is known as backstepping.