Theory of robot control (Q1917976)

The purpose of this book is to collect some of the most fundamental and current results on theory of robot control in a unified framework, by editing, improving and completing previous works in the area. The book is divided in three major parts. Parts I and II are concerned with modelling and control of rigid and flexible robot manipulators, respectively. Part III is devoted to modelling and control of mobile robots. The parts are organized into chapters, and each chapter is complemented with a further reading section which provides the reader with a detailed guide through the numerous end-of-chapter references. Part I is divided in four chapters. Chapter 1 introduces the modelling and identification of rigid robot manipulators; methods for identifying both the kinematic and the dynamic parameters are illustrated. Chapter 2 presents the properties of dynamic models useful for control design. Particular attention is paid to stability analysis. Chapter 3 addresses the control problem in the task space. Kinematic control is introduced which is based on an inverse kinematics algorithm to generate the reference inputs to some joint space controllers. Chapter 4 describes control algorithms for tasks requiring end-effector contact with environment, where both motion and force control are of concern. Part II contains two chapters. Chapter 5 considers robot manipulators with elastic joints, whereas chapter 6 covers robot manipulators with flexible links. The final part III is divided in three chapters: chapter 7 presents a general formalism for modelling of wheeled mobile robots, chapter 8 addresses feedback linearization of mobile robots, with special emphasis on the tracking control problem; chapter 9 describes several nonlinear feedback control strategies for both the regulation and tracking problems. An appendix contains essential background in control theory. The sequence of parts echoes the gradual development of robot control theory in the last fifteen years. This combination of topics makes the book an essential reference for graduate students and researchers in the field.