Stability analysis of a hybrid system arising from feedback control of flexible robots (Q678006)

The important paper deals with the problem of stability analysis for a hybrid system consisting of a coupled partial differential equation and an ordinary differential equation arising from shear force feedback control of flexible robots. Conditions on the uniformly exponential decay of solutions of the entire system have not been obtained by using the conventional method such as the Liapunov function method. These conditions are made clear by reformulating the problem and by doing spectral analysis. Main result: The authors show that if the feedback gains are properly chosen then the entire hybrid system is uniformly exponentially stable, which is very useful in practical applications.