Controlling underactuated mechanical systems: A review and open problems

Abstract

This chapter provides a short review on the popular yet still very important area of controlling underactuated mechanical systems. New solutions to the simultaneous stabilization and tracking problem are proposed for nonholonomic mobile robots using state and output feedback. Some open problems are discussed with a unique objective to solicit fundamentally novel techniques for the further development of modern nonlinear control theory. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.