In the early days of nonlinear control theory most of the stability, optimality and uncertainty concepts were descriptive rather than constructive. This survey describes their ‘activation’ into design tools and constructive procedures. Structural properties of nonlinear systems, such as relative degree and zero dynamics, are connected to passivity, while dissipativity, as a finite L2-gain prope...

This paper proposes a novel passivity cascade technique (PCT)-based control for nonlinear inverted pendulum systems. Its main objective is to stabilize the pendulum’s upward states despite uncertainties and exogenous disturbances. The proposed framework combines estimation properties of radial basis function neural networks (RBFNs) with attributes framework. unknown terms system are estimated u...

This paper develops a passivity-based robust motion controller for a robot used in prosthetic leg performance studies. The mathematical model of the robot and passive prosthesis corresponds to a three degree-of-freedom, underactuated rigid manipulator. A form of robotic testing of prostheses involves tracking reference trajectories obtained from human gait studies. The robot presented in this p...

In this thesis a nonlinear model predictive control (NMPC) scheme is presented that is based on the concept of passivity. The proposed NMPC scheme takes advantage of the relationship between optimal control and passivity and the relationship between optimal control and model predictive control. This novel NMPC scheme, guaranteeing closedloop stability through the incorporation of a passivity-ba...