Coloquium Mathematics - R. Reyes-Baez, PhD (University of Groningen)

Titel: Virtual Contraction and Passivity based Control of Nonlinear Mechanical Systems

Abstract:

In this dissertation control methods for solving the trajectory tracking and group coordination problems of nonlinear mechanical systems are proposed. These design methods are based on the concepts of virtual systems, contraction analysis and passivity. Several practical cases are considered in the present work, the tracking control design in the port-Hamiltonian (pH) framework of fully-actuated mechanical systems, flexible-joints robots and marine craft; and the group coordination of networked mechanical systems in the Euler-Lagrange (EL) framework. Both energy based modeling approaches are suitable for control design purposes, since these allow to have a clear physical understanding of the control schemes. The performance of the closed-loop fully-actuated system and of flexible joint robot is evaluated experimentally on a robot platform of two degrees of freedom; whereas the performance of the closed-loop marine craft and of the network of mechanical systems is evaluated via simulations.