Cascaded control of feedback interconnected nonlinear systems: Application to robots with AC drives (Q1129701)

The present paper considers the design of global tracking controllers for feedback interconnected nonlinear systems with partial state measurements. The problem in which the forward subsystem is an underactuated Euler-Lagrange system and where in the absence of the latter, a stabilizing controller is known for the feedback subsystem, appearing in many practical applications, leads naturally to a classical cascaded control scheme. The main contribution of the work is the proof of conditions under which a design of an inner-loop controller for the Euler-Lagrange system may be done such that global tracking is achieved. To insure asymptotic tracking of the inner loop the derivative of its reference, which is the output of the outer loop controller, is typically needed and this problem is overcome by adding a nonlinear observer. The procedure is used to design an output feedback global tracking position controller for robot manipulators actuated by AC drivers.