Energy-guarded Loop-control Architecture

Passivity is a sufficient condition for system stability and is particularly convenient in loop-control design. This paper presents an architecture for composing and structuring loop controllers out of generic components with preserved passivity properties. This allows handling passivity at a structural level by monitoring the energy flows. A use case shows how this architecture preserves the passivity and, in consequence, the stability of a robotic system operating under detrimental conditions. This effort facilitates generating loop-control software which passivity is unaffected by its composition and/or operation conditions.