The workshop on Control Mechanics, originated in 1988, beca- me an annual event and gained considerable recognition in advancing control of nonlinear and uncertain mechanical sy- tems and promoting application of advanced mechanics in con- trol. The fourth meeting continues the tradition with 17 papers containing original and recent work of the partici- pants developed in 3 basic directions: feed-back control of uncertain systems, flexible mechanical structures and flight control.

A modern and unified treatment of the mechanics, planning, and control of robots, suitable for a first course in robotics.

Parallel structures are more effective than serial ones for industrial automation applications that require high precision and stiffness, or a high load capacity relative to robot weight. Although many industrial applications have adopted parallel structures for their design, few textbooks introduce the analysis of such robots in terms of dynamics

Thank you for opening the second edition of this monograph, which is devoted to the study of a class of nonsmooth dynamical systems of the general form: ::i; = g(x,u) (0. 1) f(x, t) 2: 0 where x E JRn is the system's state vector, u E JRm is the vector of inputs, and the function f (-, . ) represents a unilateral constraint that is imposed on the state. More precisely, we shall restrict ourselves to a subclass of such systems, namely mechanical systems subject to unilateral constraints on the position, whose dynamical equations may be in a first instance written as: ii= g(q,q,u) (0. 2) f(q, t) 2: 0 where q E JRn is the vector of generalized coordinates of the system and u is an in put (or controller) that generally involves a state feedback loop, i. e. u= u(q, q, t, z), with z= Z(z, q, q, t) when the controller is a dynamic state feedback. Mechanical systems composed of rigid bodies interacting fall into this subclass. A general prop erty of systems as in (0. 1) and (0. 2) is that their solutions are nonsmooth (with respect to time): Nonsmoothness arises primarily from the occurence of impacts (or collisions, or percussions) in the dynamical behaviour, when the trajectories attain the surface f(x, t) = O. They are necessary to keep the trajectories within the subspace = {x : f(x, t) 2: O} of the system's state space.

The area of analysis and control of mechanical systems using differential geometry is flourishing. This book collects many results over the last decade and provides a comprehensive introduction to the area.

This book explores connections between control theory and geometric mechanics. The author links control theory with a geometric view of classical mechanics in both its Lagrangian and Hamiltonian formulations, and in particular with the theory of mechanical systems subject to motion constraints. The synthesis is appropriate as there is a rich connection between mechanics and nonlinear control theory. The book provides a unified treatment of nonlinear control theory and constrained mechanical systems that incorporates material not available in other recent texts. The book benefits graduate students and researchers in the area who want to enhance their understanding and enhance their techniques.