Asymptotic path following and velocity control of port-Hamiltonian systems

This paper is devoted to path following control for port-Hamiltonian systems which have energy dissipation mechanism. The control law presented here is extension of an existing passive velocity field controller for fully actuated mechanical systems. The proposed method employs vector fields on co-tangent spaces instead of those on tangent spaces. Since port-Hamiltonian systems can describe a wider class of systems than conventional mechanical ones, the proposed method is applicable to various systems. Futhermore, we can control the velocity directly by this method while it is not possible with the conventional approach.