Henk Nijmeijer

This monograph combines the knowledge of both the field of nonlinear dynamics and non-smooth mechanics, presenting a framework for a class of non-smooth mechanical systems using techniques from both fields. The book reviews recent developments, and opens the field to the nonlinear dynamics community. This book addresses researchers and graduate students in engineering and mathematics interested in the modelling, simulation and dynamics of non-smooth systems and nonlinear dynamics.

This book has recently been retypeset in LaTeX for clearer presentation. This textbook on the differential geometric approach to nonlinear control grew out of a set of lecture notes, which were prepared for a course on nonlinear system theory, given by us for the first time during the fall semester of 1988. The audience consisted mostly of graduate students , taking part in the Dutch national Graduate Program on Systems and Control. The course gives a general introduction to modern nonlinear control theory (with an emphasis on the differential geometric approach), as well as providing students specializing in nonlinear control theory with a firm starting point for doing research in this area. One of the authors' primary objectives is to give a self-contained treatment of all the topics covered. Although the amount of work published on nonlinear geometric control theory is expanding rapidly expanding, the authors confine themselves to treating solid and clear-cut achievements of modern nonlinear control, which can be expected to be of remaining interest. The final selection of topics reflects the authors' own judgement of their importance.

The problem of asymptotic regulation of the output of a dynamical system plays a central role in control theory. An important variant of this problem is the output regulation problem, which can be used in areas such as s- point control, tracking reference signals and rejecting disturbances generated by an external system, controlled synchronization of dynamical systems, and observer design for autonomous systems. At the moment this is a hot topic in nonlinear control. This book is a result of a four-year research project conducted at the Eindhoven University of Technology. This project, entitled “Robust output regulation for complex dynamical systems,” began with the observation that theproblemofcontrolledsynchronizationofdynamicalsystemscanbecons- ered as a particular case of the output regulation problem. In the beginning of the project, known solutions to the controlled synchronization problem were global and dealt with nonlinear systems having complex (“chaotic”) dyn- ics. At the same time, most of the existing solutions to the nonlinear output regulation problem were local and dealt mostly with exosystems being linear harmonicoscillators. Ourinitialideawas,usingtheresultsfromthecontrolled synchronization problem as a starting point, to extend solutions of the n- linear output regulation problem from the local case to the global case and to avoid restrictive assumptions on the exosystem. As a ?rst step, we started looking for points that were common to these two problems.

This monograph combines the knowledge of both the field of nonlinear dynamics and non-smooth mechanics, presenting a framework for a class of non-smooth mechanical systems using techniques from both fields. The book reviews recent developments, and opens the field to the nonlinear dynamics community. This book addresses researchers and graduate students in engineering and mathematics interested in the modelling, simulation and dynamics of non-smooth systems and nonlinear dynamics.

The main goal of this book is to prove analytically and validate experimentally that synchronization in multi-composed mechanical systems can be achieved in the case of partial knowledge of the state vector of the systems, i.e. when only positions are measured. For this purpose, synchronization schemes based on interconnections between the systems, feedback controllers and observers are proposed. Because mechanical systems include a large variety of systems, and since it is impossible to address all of them, the book focuses on robot manipulators. Nonetheless the ideas developed here can be extended to other mechanical systems, such as mobile robots, motors and generators.

This book has recently been retypeset in LaTeX for clearer presentation. This textbook on the differential geometric approach to nonlinear control grew out of a set of lecture notes, which were prepared for a course on nonlinear system theory, given by us for the first time during the fall semester of 1988. The audience consisted mostly of graduate students , taking part in the Dutch national Graduate Program on Systems and Control. The course gives a general introduction to modern nonlinear control theory (with an emphasis on the differential geometric approach), as well as providing students specializing in nonlinear control theory with a firm starting point for doing research in this area. One of the authors' primary objectives is to give a self-contained treatment of all the topics covered. Although the amount of work published on nonlinear geometric control theory is expanding rapidly expanding, the authors confine themselves to treating solid and clear-cut achievements of modern nonlinear control, which can be expected to be of remaining interest. The final selection of topics reflects the authors' own judgement of their importance.