A quasi-velocity-based nonlinear controller for rigid manipulators

The problem of position control in the operational space of a robot manipulator is addressed in the paper. The proposed controller is based on equations of motion expressed in terms of normalized generalized velocity components (NGVC) which result from decomposition of the manipulator inertia matrix. The sufficient conditions for global exponential stability of the system under the controller are given. It is shown that using the controller an further insight into the system dynamics is possible. The proposed control algorithm is tested via simulation on a spatial manipulator with three degrees of freedom.