Decoupled nonlinear robotic control with series compliance and bounded inputs

A robotic control scheme that accounts for a realistic model of the arm is presented. The model includes the nonlinearities inherent to the arm; the interaction between the drive motor and the arm, which are coupled by harmonic drives; and the possible saturation of the actuators. A nonlinear control procedure is used to decouple the outputs of the arm subsystem. To control the actuators, a pointwise optimal control law that minimizes, at each instant, the error between the desired state velocity vector and the actual state velocity vector of the motor subsystem, is used