A controller for 2-DOF underactuated mechanical systems with discontinuous friction

We propose a controller for a class of 2-DOF underactuated mechanical systems with discontinuous friction in the unactuated joint. The control objective is the regulation of the unactuated variable while the position and speed of the actuated joint remain bounded. The unactuated joint is considered as a mechanical system with discontinuous friction but continuous, artificial control input given by a term depending on the actuated positions and velocities. The proposed controller guarantees the convergence of the position error of the unactuated joint to zero, and it is robust with respect to some uncertainty in the discontinuous friction coefficients. We illustrate the technique with its application to two systems.