Physical Control for Physical Systems: Why and How

Robotics is about control of physical systems and to be effective in robotics control, physically based methodology should be used. An introduction will be give about the concepts behind Energy Aware robotics and the reasons why this is sometimes the only way to go once interaction between robots and the environment is of importance. Examples will be given of the advantages of such methodologies and the basic ideas and first results will be illustrated on how these techniques will be used in the ERC granted PortWings project related to the modeling and control of a robotics flying bird.