Passivity-based control of mechanical systems with linear damping identification

Abstract: We propose a control approach for a class of nonlinear mechanical systems to stabilize the system under study while ensuring that the oscillations of the transient response are reduced. The approach is twofold: (i) we apply our technique for linear viscous damping identification of the system to improve the accuracy of the selected control technique, and (ii) we implement a passivity-based controller to stabilize and reduce the oscillations by selecting the control parameters properly in accordance with the identified damping. Moreover, we provide an analysis for a particular passivity-based control approach that has been shown successfully for reducing such oscillations. Also, we validate the methodology by implementing it experimentally in a planar manipulator.