Robust motion/force control of mechanical systems with classical nonholonomic constraints

The position/force control of mechanical systems subject to a set of classical nonholonomic constraints represents an important class of control problems. In this note, a reduced dynamic model, suitable for simultaneous independent motion and force control, is developed. Some properties of the dynamic model are exploited to facilitate the controller design. Based on the theory of guaranteed stability of uncertain systems, a robust control algorithm is derived, which guarantees the uniform ultimate boundedness of the tracking errors. A detailed numerical example is presented to illustrate the developed method