Adaptive strategies in constrained manipulation

Earlier work (Slotine and Li, 1986) demonstrates that using state feedback to directly modify a manipulator´s energy function, rather than its fully expanded dynamics, represents a powerful approach to robot control, and, in particular, yields a simple globally convergent adaptive algorithm for trajectory control problems. An important practical feature of the algorithm is that is does not require measurements or estimates of the manipulator´s joint accelerations. This paper rewrites the approach in term of end-effector dynamics, extends it to hybrid motion/force control, and discusses adaptive strategies involving mobile environments, such as the external motion control of an unknown passive mechanism.