Selective compliance articulated robot arms (SCARA) robotic manipulators find wide use in industry. A nonlinear optimal control approach is proposed for the dynamic model of the 4-degrees of freedom (DOF) SCARA robotic manipulator. The dynamic model of the SCARA robot undergoes approximate linearization around a temporary operating point that is recomputed at each time-step of the control method. The linearization relies on Taylor series expansion and on the associated Jacobian matrices. For the linearized state-space model of the system, a stabilizing optimal (H-infinity) feedback controller is designed. To compute the controller’s feedback gains, an algebraic Riccati equation is repetitively solved at each iteration of the control algorithm. The stability properties of the control method are proven through Lyapunov analysis. The proposed control method is advantageous because: (i) unlike the popular computed torque method for robotic manipulators, it is characterized by optimality and is also applicable when the number of control inputs is not equal to the robot’s number of DOFs and (ii) it achieves fast and accurate tracking of reference setpoints under minimal energy consumption by the robot’s actuators. The nonlinear optimal controller for the 4-DOF SCARA robot is finally compared against a flatness-based controller implemented in successive loops.

Let $\mathcal {N}$ be a non-Archimedean-ordered field extension of the real numbers that is real closed and Cauchy complete in the topology induced by the order, and whose Hahn group is Archimedean. In this paper, we first review the properties of weakly locally uniformly differentiable (WLUD) functions, $k$ times weakly locally uniformly differentiable (WLUD$^{k}$) functions and WLUD$^{\infty }$ functions at a point or on an open subset of $\mathcal {N}$. Then, we show under what conditions a WLUD$^{\infty }$ function at a point $x_0\in \mathcal {N}$ is analytic in an interval around $x_0$, that is, it has a convergent Taylor series at any point in that interval. We generalize the concepts of WLUD$^{k}$ and WLUD$^{\infty }$ to functions from $\mathcal {N}^{n}$ to $\mathcal {N}$, for any $n\in \mathbb {N}$. Then, we formulate conditions under which a WLUD$^{\infty }$ function at a point $\boldsymbol {x_0} \in \mathcal {N}^{n}$ is analytic at that point.

The article proposes a nonlinear optimal control method for the model of the wheeled inverted pendulum (WIP). This is a difficult control and robotics problem due to the system’s strong nonlinearities and due to its underactuation. First, the dynamic model of the WIP undergoes approximate linearization around a temporary operating point which is recomputed at each time step of the control method. The linearization procedure makes use of Taylor series expansion and of the computation of the associated Jacobian matrices. For the linearized model of the wheeled pendulum, an optimal (H-infinity) feedback controller is developed. The controller’s gain is computed through the repetitive solution of an algebraic Riccati equation at each iteration of the control algorithm. The global asymptotic stability properties of the control method are proven through Lyapunov analysis. Finally, by using the H-infinity Kalman Filter as a robust state estimator, the implementation of a state estimation-based control scheme becomes also possible.