Passivity-Based Control of Robots: Theory and Examples from the Literature

The use of passivity in control theory was motivated by the earlier use of passivity in circuit theory and passive network synthesis, beginning in the 1950s. With the well known analogy between electrical and mechanical systems, it is natural that passivity should play an important role in the control of mechanical systems and, in particular, in the control of robots. Beginning in the 1980s, the passivity property and passivity-based control began to play an increasingly important role in a host of robotics applications, including robust and adaptive control of manipulators, and time-delayed teleoperation. This article provides a historical overview of passivity-based robot control from the authors’ perspective and their contributions in control of Lagrangian and Hamiltonian systems, networked control, teleoperation, and vision-based control.