Systematic design of instrumentation architecture for control of mechanical systems

The selection and placement of sensors and actuators is an important step in the design of controlled systems such as robots and space structures with structural flexibility. Essentially all systematic methods proposed in the literature for this design step are only valid for linear systems. To overcome this limitation, this paper proposes a new approach based on hyperstability. The method is suitable for use with conventional as well as intelligent and nonlinear control systems. Its application is illustrated in a space robotics example.