Regulation of manipulators in generic task space: an energy shaping plus damping injection approach

The position control of robot manipulators in generic task space is addressed in this paper. The main ingredient in the formulation is the use of the task function concept which includes as particular cases the task specifications in joint and Cartesian spaces. The main theoretical contribution is a novel stability analysis of a wide class of robot regulators based in energy shaping plus damping injection. We also provide sufficient conditions to design effective regulators. This approach is illustrated via experimental tests on a direct drive arm where specifications are given in Cartesian and image-based task spaces, respectively.