Integrated mechanical and control design of underactuated multibody systems

Multibody systems are called underactuated if they have less control inputs than degrees of freedom, e.g. due to passive joints or body flexibility. For trajectory tracking of underactuated multibody systems often advanced modern nonlinear control techniques are necessary. The analysis of underactuated multibody systems might show that they possess internal dynamics. Feedback linearization is only possible if the internal dynamics remain bounded, i.e. the system is minimum phase. Also feed-forward control design for minimum phase systems is much easier to realize than for non-minimum phase systems. However, often the initial design of an underactuated multibody system is non-minimum phase. Therefore, in this paper a procedure for integrated mechanical and control design is proposed such that minimum phase underactuated multibody systems are obtained. Thereby an optimization-based design process is used, whereby the geometric dimensions and mass distribution of the multibody systems are altered.