Global connective stability of a class of robotic manipulators (Q1112775)

Connective stability of a class of robotic manipulator control laws is investigated. The nonlinear control laws include those controls that only approximately compensate the gravity, Coriolis and centripetal coupling amongst the degrees of freedom of a manipulator as a result of dynamic model parameter inaccuracy. With this nonlinear feedback applied to the robotic system, a nonlinear perturbation model is developed. This perturbed system is treated as a set of interconnected subsystems, where the interconnections represent nonlinear perturbation terms, resulting from the approximate nonlinear compensation of coupling forces. Under certain conditions on the magnitude of the nonlinear perturbed coupling terms, the perturbed system and hence the robotic system can be shown to be globally asymptotically connectively stable. This result is extended to a class of manipulator systems which does not include compensation for dynamic coupling between the degrees of freedom, but as a result of mechanical design, exhibit weak coupling amongst the degrees of freedom.