ENERGY-BASED CONTROL OF THE BUTTERFLY ROBOT

We address the control problem for the Butterfly, an interesting example of 2-dof underactuated mechanical system. This robot consists of a butterfly-shaped rotational link on whose rim a ball rolls freely. The control objective is to stabilize the robot at a certain unstable equilibrium. To this end, exploiting the existence of heteroclinic trajectories, we extend a previously proposed energy-based technique. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the presented method.