Sensitivity reduction of mechanical descriptor systems

This paper deals with the position and force control for mechanicalsystems with holonomic constraints. Our concern is thedesign of a feedback controller such that the closed-loop systemhas a satisfactory transient response and is less sensitive tovarious types of disturbances. Using an appropriate transformation, the constrained system is converted into an unconstrainedsystem of lower order. Then, an H ∞ control probleminvolving the reduced system is formulated. In the case of statefeedback, a systematic design procedure for solving the problemis presented, where the key step is the solution of an algebraicRiccati equation. An example is given to illustrate the effectivenessof the proposed method. © 1997 ASME.