Asymptotically stable set point control laws for flexible robots

A general family of asymptotically stabilizing control laws is introduced for a class of nonlinear Hamiltonian systems. The inherent passivity property of this class of systems and the Passivity Theorem are used to show the closed loop input/output stability which is then related to the internal state space stability through an observability condition. Applications of these results include fully actuated robots, flexible-joint robots, and robots with link flexibility.