Robots, and more generally mechanical systems, are types of a physical system. This is why it is important to study and control these systems using information about their particular structure that describes their particular nature.
In discussing physical systems, concepts like energy, interconnection and interaction, become of substantial importance. Furthermore, during the modeling and control tasks, the results we obtain should be independent from artificial co-ordinates that people use to analyse the results of their work. This has lead to the concept of co-ordinate free description...

This monograph deals with energy based control of interactive robotic interfaces. The port-Hamiltonian framework is exploited both for modeling and controlling interactive robotic interfaces. The book provides an energy oriented analysis and control synthesis of interactive robotic interfaces, from a single robot to multi-robot systems for interacting with real and virtual, possibly unstructured, environments.

Energy exchange is a major foundation of the dynamics of physical systems, and, hence, in the study of complex multi-domain systems, methodologies that explicitly describe the topology of energy exchanges are instrumental in structuring the modeling and the computation of the system's dynamics and its control.

This book is the outcome of the European Project "Geoplex" (FP5 IST-2001-34166) that studied and extended such system modeling and control methodologies. This unique book starts from the basic concept of port-based modeling, and extends it to port-Hamiltonian systems. This...