Download or read book Essays on Mathematical Robotics written by John Baillieul and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The chapters in this book present an excellent exposition of recent developments in both robotics and nonlinear control centering around "hyper-redundancy", highly oscillatory inputs, optimal control, exterior differential systems, and the use of generic loops. The principal topics covered in the book are: adaptive control for a class of nonlinear systems, event-based motion planning, nonlinear control synthesis and path planning in robotics with special emphasis on nonholonomic and "hyper-redundant" robotic systems, control design and stabilization of driftless affine control systems (of the type arising in the kinematic control of nonholonomic robotic systems), control design methods for Hamiltonian systems and exterior differential systems. The chapter covering exterior differential systems contains a detailed introduction to the use of exterior differential methods, including the Goursat and extended Goursat normal forms and their application to path planning for nonholonomic systems.