32

Asian Journal of Control, Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 32-38, March 2003

PID REGULATION OF ROBOT MANIPULATORS WITH

ELASTIC JOINTS
Jose Alvarez-Ramirez and Ilse Cervantes
ABSTRACT
This paper studies the stability of a class of PID controller to stabilize
robot manipulators with elastic joints. It is shown that a PD action on the rotor position and an integral control action on the link position suffice to provide semiglobal asymptotic stability of the desired link position.
KeyWords: Elastic joints robots, PID control, semiglobal stability, uncertain
gravity torques, uncertain stiffness parameters.

I. INTRODUCTION
Most industrial robots are equipped with gearboxes,
harmonic drives and chain or belts, which may introduce
undesirable elastic deformations in the robot joints.
These elastic coupling introduce one additional degree of
freedom at each joint so that it requires 2n generalized
coordinates to describe the configuration of a n-link
robot manipulator [9].
A common approach to address the basic pointto-point regulation problem is by using proportional plus
derivative (PD) controllers with gravity compensation
[3,7,12]. The regulation problem without velocity measurements has been addressed in [3,8,10]. Recently in [9]
it has been shown that the controller in [12] belongs to
the class of energy shaping controllers, and the energy
shaping methodology is extended to include the formulation when only position (but no velocity) is available for
measurement. The extension is based on class of reduced-order observers introduced in [4].
On the other hand, a variety of formulations have
been used to solve the control problem in presence of
unavoidable uncertain gravity torques [1,8,12]. In [1] a
PD control action with an iterative scheme to learn (unknown) gravity torques is proposed. An essential tool in
the design and stability analysis of iterative schemes is
the contraction mapping theorem. Recently, this apManuscript received March 21, 2001; revised July 13, 2001;
accepted January 30, 2002.
Jose Alvarez-Ramirez is with Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana Iztapalapa, Division de Ciencias Basicas e Ingenieria, Apartado Postal 55-534, Mexico D.F. 09340, MEXICO.
Ilse Cervantes is with Seccion de Estudios de Posgrado e
Investigacion ESIME-Culhuacan, Av. Santa Ana 1000, Col.
San Francisco Culhuacan, Mexico D.F., 04430 MEXICO.

proach has been extended to electrically-driven elastic-joints [2]. The proposed iterative scheme involves
discrete-time computations of the on-line estimated
gravity torques and guarantees practically stability (i.e.,
every system response converges to an arbitrarily small
neighborhood of the equilibrium point).
Sufficient conditions for the stability (i.e., globally,
ultimately bounded signals) of the controlled robotic
system with PD control and estimated gravitational
torques, are provided in [8,12]. Global convergence of
controlled trajectories to a unique equilibrium point is
proven. However, due to the presence of uncertain stiffness parameters and gravitational torques, a steady-state
is present in the controlled system. Departing from linear
control theory arguments, a easy solution to remove
steady-state offset is to add a linear integral action on the
feedback law. In virtually all present day robotic applications, PD actions are used together with a classical integral action on the link position to compensate the uncertainty of the system and to ensure that the equilibrium
position coincides with the desired one. There are many
reasons for that, including their long history of proven
operation, the fact that they are well understood by many
industrial operational, technical and maintenance individuals. In spite of its proven robust functioning capability in industrial applications, the PID control of elastic
joint robot manipulators still lacks of understanding and
systematization in the sense of modern control approaches. The systematization is required to simplify the
construction, the tuning and the maintenance of the control schemes; and the understanding issue is important to
assess the basic capabilities and limitations in control
designs intended for high performance with adequate
robustness levels and safety margins. This motivates and
justifies the present work, where some of the aforementioned issues are studied.

J. Alvarez-Ramirez and I. Cervantes: PID Regulation of Robot Manipulators with Elastic Joints

The goal of this note is to study the stability of

elastic-joints robot manipulator under a class of PD control equipped with a classical integral (I) action. It is
proved that a PD as in [9] acting on the joint position
error and a linear integral term acting on the link position
error suffice to stabilize semiglobally and asymptotically
the desired link position. To the best of our knowledge
such result is non-existing.
Notations. Throughout this paper, denotes the Euclidean norm of  n and denotes the induced matrix
norm. For g :  m  n , Dg(x0) (D2g(x0)) denotes the
Frechet first (respectively, second) derivative of g evaluated at x0. For f :  n  m  n , D1f(x0, y0) (D2 f(x0, y0))
denotes the derivative of f with respect to the first (second, respectively) variable evaluated at (x0, y0). For a
given positive-definite matrix A, max(A) (min(A)) denotes the maximum (minimum, respectively) eigenvalue.
0n is the n-dimensional zero vector, 0n n is the n- dimensional zero matrix, and In n is the n-dimensional identity
matrix.

II. PRELIMINARIES

M (q1 )q1 + C (q1 , q 1 )q 1 + g (q1 ) = K (q 2 q1 )

(1)

where q1  n and q2  n represent respectively the

link angles and motor angles, M(q1)  nn is the symmetric positive-definite inertia matrix, J  nn is a
diagonal positive-definite matrix, K  nn is the diagonal positive-definite stiffness matrix, C(q1, q1 ) q1
 n is the vector of Coriolis and centripetal torques,
 n are the applied torques and g(q1)  n is the
vector of gravitational torques obtained as the gradient of
the potential energy G(q1) due to gravity, i.e., g(q1) =
DG(q1).
In the sequel, it will be assumed that the robotic
system (1) meets the following properties [11]:
Property 1. There exists a positive constant kg such that
k g > Dg (q1 ) , for all q1  n

dominate over the gravity torques in the sense that stiffness matrix K satisfies:

min ( K ) > k g

(3)

Property 3 is crucial for the solvability of the position control problem (see [10]) In fact, Property 3 establishes that the robotic system is able to reach the desired
position for a given payload.
Model (1) and Properties (1)-(3) define the class of
elastic-joint robotic systems under consideration. The
class of PD controllers with classical integral action (PID
control, in short) is given as follows. Let q1,d  n be a
desired link position. Consider a continuous dissipative
function f( q 2 ) C2 such that [9]
f (q 2 ) = 0 if q 2 = 0  n
q 2T f (q 2 ) > 0 for all q 2 0  n

(4)

Let (( q 2, d q2) :  n  be a C2 potential function

satisfying
( (0) = 0

By assuming elasticity modeled as a linear torsional spring and the angular contribution of the kinetic
energy of each rotor due only to its rotation, the simplified dynamic model of a n-degree-of-freedom robot manipulator with flexible joints and gravity torques are
given by [11]:

Jq2 + K ( q 2 q1 ) =

33

(2)

Property 2. M(q1) 2C(q1, q1 ) q1 is a skew-symmetric

matrix.
Property 3. The joint stiffness potential coefficients

D( (0) = 0  n
where
q 2, d = q1, d + K 1 g (q1, d )  n

(5)

is the estimated rotor position corresponding to the desired link position q1,d  n , K is the estimate of K, and
g (q1,d) is an estimate of the gravitational torques at the
desired link position. The PID control law is given in
terms of (( q 2, d q2) as

= D( (q 2, d q 2 ) f (q 2 ) + g (q1, d )
t

+ K I 0 [q1, d q1 ( )]d

(6)

1
(q 2, d q 2 ) T KP( q 2, d
2
q2) and f ( q 2 ) = KD q 2 , where Kp and KD are positive-definite matrices, the controller (6) becomes a classical linear PID controller
Remark 1. If ( (q 2, d q 2 ) =

= K P ( q 2, d q 2 ) K D q 2 + g ( q1, d )
t

+ K I 0 [q1, d q1 ( )]d

(7)

with D2(( q 2, d q 2 ) = KP. In this way, the functions

D(( q 2, d q 2 ) and f( q 2 ) can be seen respectively as
generalized proportional and derivative control actions.
It should be notice that, if KI = 0, the control law (7)
reduces to the PD controller reported in [9].

Asian Journal of Control, Vol. 5, No. 1, March 2003

34

where I  n is seen as a system parameter. The

closed-loop system is given by

III. MAIN RESULT

The main contribution of this note can be formulated as follows:
Theorem 1. Consider the dynamic model (1) of elastic
joint robot manipulators under the PID controller (6).
Assume that the artificial potential (( q 2,d q2) is chosen such that the matrix
(q1 , )

def

Dg (q1 ) + [ D 2 ( ( )][ K 1 Dg (q1 ) + I n ]

f (q 2 ) + g (q1, d ) + I
(9)
For a given I  n , the equilibrium position ( q1 , q 2 )T
 2n of (9) are defined by

= ( q1 , q 2 ; I )

is positive-definite for all ( q1T , T)  2n Then, for

small enough K I , the closed-loop system is semiglobally stable about the point (q1, q1 , q2, q 2 ) = (q1,d, 0,
q2,d, 0)  4n , with q1,d the desired link position and
q2,d the corresponding desired rotor position ( q 2,d def
q1,d + K1g(q1,d)  n ).
Remark 2. In the case of linear PID control (see Eq. (7)),
the result in Theorem 1 implies that, for each compact
T
T
T
set W  4n of initial conditions ( q1,0
, q1,0
, q 2,0
,
T
T
q 2,0 ) W there exist PID control gains {KP, KI, KD}
such that ( q1 , q1 , q 2 , q 2 ) = (q1,d, 0, q2,d, 0)  4n is
an asymptotically stable equilibrium point of the controlled robot system and the closed-loop basin of attraction contains W.
Remark 3. The positivity condition on the matrix
(q1 , ) is almost necessary for guaranteeing the exponential stability of a reduced system (see Eq. (21) below).
This condition is not restrictive since there is always a
choice of the artificial potential (( q 2, d q 2 ) for which
this condition can be satisfied. For instance, if
1
(q 2, d q 2 ) T KP( q 2, d q 2 ), we have
(( q 2, d q 2 ) =
2
that ( q1 , ) = Dg( q1 ) + KP[K1Dg( q1 ) + In]. Property
3 implies that K1Dg( q1 ) + In is a positive-definite matrix. If in addition KP = In, > 0, then by virtue of
Property 1, there exists a positive constant min such that
( q1 , ) is positive-definite for all > min.
We establish the proof of Theorem 1 through two
steps. In the first step, we study the stability of the robot
system under PD feedback action. Specifically, we establish some useful stability and steady-state properties.
Based on these results and on singular perturbation theory, Theorem 1 is proven.
3.1 PD Control
Consider the generalized PD controller:

= D( (q 2,d q 2 ) f ( q 2 ) + g (q1,d ) + I

M (q1 )q1 + C (q1 , q 1 )q 1 + g (q1 ) = K (q 2 q1 )

J q2 + K (q 2 q1 ) = D( (q 2, d q 2 )

(8)

def

g ( q1 ) K ( q 2 q1 )

K (q q ) D( (q q ) g (q ) = 0 (10)
2
1
2, d
2
1, d
I

In the following, the stability and steady-state properties

of the input-output map I q1 will be studied.
Proposition 2. Under the assumptions of Theorem 1, the
following statements hold for the controlled robotic system (9):
a) There exists a C 1 function ( I ) def ( 1 ( I ) T ,

2( I )T)T  n  n such that (1( I ), 2( I );

I ) = 0 for all I  n . This is, the PD-controlled
system (9) has a unique equilibrium position
( q1T , q 2T )T = (1( I )T, 2( I )T)T, for all I  n .
b) D1( I ) is a positive-definite matrix, for all I
n .
c) The equilibrium point (q1, q1 , q2, q 2 ) = (1( I ), 0,
2( I ), 0) is globally asymptotically and locally exponentially stable, for all I  n .
Proof. a) The proof can be found in [9]. b) From the first
equality in (10), we get q 2 = q1 + K1g( q1 ). This expression can be used in the second equality in (10) to
give
g (q1 ) D( (q 2, d q1 K 1 g (q1 )) g (q1, d ) I = 0 (11)
From this expression, we get
D I = Dg (q1 ) + [ D 2 ( ][ K 1 Dg ( q1 ) + I n ]
where D I

def

I / q I is a positive-definite matrix

by assumption (see [9,12]). Moreover, since the inverse

of a positive-definite matrix is also positive-definite, we
conclude that D( I ) is a positive-definite matrix for all
I  n . Global invertibility of ( I ) can be easily established from (11). In fact, 1( q1 ) = g( q1 ) D(( q 2, d
q1 K1g( q1 )) g (q1,d). c) Global asymptotic stability of the equilibrium point ( q1 , 0, q 2 , 0) = (1( I ),
0, 2( I ), 0) can be proved along the same steps used in

J. Alvarez-Ramirez and I. Cervantes: PID Regulation of Robot Manipulators with Elastic Joints

[9]. In fact, the Lyapunov function is

V (q1 , q1 , q 2 , q 2 ) =

1
1
q1 M (q1 )q1 + q 2 Jq 2 + U T (q1 , q 2 )
2
2

where
U T ( q1 , q 2 ) =

1
(q d ,1 q1 ) T K (q d ,1 q1 ) + G (q1 ) G (q d ,1 )
2
+ g (q1, d ) T (q d ,1 q1 )

L
is a negative semidefinite function. Thereand so V(12)
fore, by invoking the LaSalles invariance principle, asymptotic, hence exponential stability of the linear system
(12) is demonstrated.

3.2 Proof of Theorem 1. Let x = ( x1T , x 2T , x 3T , x 4T )

 4n , with x1 = q1  n , x 2 = q1  n , x 3 = q 2  n ,
x 4 = q 2  n . We can write the robot system (1) under
the PID controller (6) as a system of first-order differential equations:

(q d ,1 q1 ) T K (q d ,2 q 2 ) + ( (q 2, d q 2 )

x = f ( x, z I )

1
+ (q d ,2 q 2 ) T K (q d ,2 q 2 )
2

z I = K I (q1,d x1 )

and #(q2) the potential function of stiffness torques. Notice that UT(q1,d, q2,d) = 0. The time derivative of V along
the trajectories of system (9) satisfies that
V q 2T f (q 2 )

Such time-derivative function is negative semidefinite,

thus by virtue of Proposition 2.a and by invoking the
LaSalle's invariance theorem, one can conclude asymptotic stability of the equilibrium ( q1 , 0, q 2 , 0). In order
to prove local exponential stability, consider the local
linearization of system (9) about the equilibrium point
( q1 , 0, q 2 , 0):
M (q1 )q1 + Dg (q1 )q1 = K (q 2 q1 )
J q 2 + K ( q 2 q1 ) = D 2 ( ( q 2, d q 2 ) q 2 Df (0) q 2
(12)

where q1 def q1 q1 and q 2 def q 2 q 2 . Notice that

the origin 04n is the equilibrium point of the linear system (12). Let us consider as a Lyapunov function candidate the total system energy by taking the sum of the
kinetic plus the total potential energy V L (q , q ) =
1 T
q % q + - T (q ) where % def diag ( M (q1 ) , J) and
2
the total potential energy is given as the sum of the potential energies due to the control law, gravity and the
torsional spring:
- T (q ) def

1 T
[q 2 D( (q 2, d q 2 )q 2 + q1T Dg (q1 )q1
2
+(q 2 q1 ) T K (q 2 q1 )]

In [9] it is shown that V L (q , q ) is positive-definite and

radially unbounded. The time derivative of V L (q , q )
L
along the trajectories of (12) gives V(12)
= q 2T Df (0)q 2 .
From the condition of the dissipative function f (q 2 )
we conclude that Df(0) is a positive-definite function,

35

(13)

with f(x, zI) = (f1(x, zI)T, f2(x, zI)T, f3(x, zI)T, f4(x, zI)T)T
 4n , where
f 1 ( x, z I ) = x 2
f 2 ( x, z I ) = M ( x1 ) 1{C ( x1 , x 2 ) x 2 g ( x1 ) + K ( x 3 x1 )}
f 3 ( x, z I ) = x 4
f 4 ( x, z I ) = J 1{ K ( x 3 x1 ) + T PID ( x, z I )}

(14)

and, according to Eq. (6),

T PID ( x, z I ) def D( (q 2, d x 3 ) f ( x 4 ) + g (q1, d ) + z I

(15)
As in [5], let us shift the origin to the equilibrium point.
First, define the constant input I,d  n corresponding
to the desired position q1,d  n as follows:
q1, d = 1 ( I , d )

(16)

Uniqueness of I,d is guaranteed since 1(I,d) is an

invertible function (Proposition 2). For simplicity in
notation, define the augmented function a ( I ) def
( 1 ( I ) T , 0 Tn , 2 ( I ) T , 0 Tn )T  4n . Introduce the new
variables
x (t ) = x(t ) a ( z I (t ))
z I (t ) = z I (t ) I , d

(17)

Using x (t ) and z I (t ) as state variables, system (13)

becomes
x = f ( x + a ( z I + I , d ), z I + I , d )

K I D a ( z I + I , d ) E1[ a ( I , d ) a ( z I + I , d ) x ]
z I = K I E1[ a ( I , d ) a ( z I + I , d ) x ]

where E1

def

(18)

diag[In n,0n n, 0 n n, 0 n n]  4 n 4 n .

Asian Journal of Control, Vol. 5, No. 1, March 2003

36

Let KI = K I , where K I a positive-definite matrix

and > 0 is a parameter. Let t def t be a new time
scale (t is slow time compared to t). Define the variables
(t) and (t) by (t) = x (t/) and I(t) = z I (t/). Using
t, (t) and (t) as new variables (hence, denotes
d/dt, etc.), rewrite (18) as

= f ( + a ( I + I , d ), I + I , d )
K I D a ( I + I , d ) E1[ a ( I , d ) a ( I + I , d ) ]

I = K I E1[ a ( I , d ) a ( I + I , d ) ]

(19)

Clearly, (, ) = (04n, 0n) is the equilibrium point of (19).

Since > 0, ((t), (t)) (04n, 0n) as t implies
that ( x (t ), z I (t )) (04n, 0n) as t . For small
enough > 0, the system (19) is in the form of standard
singular perturbation [6], where and I are respectively the fast and slow variables. To prove the theorem,
we will show that all conditions of Theorem 3 in [6] are
met. If in (18), we let = 0 (i.e., KI = 0), and hence
z I (t ) = z I (0) = z I ,0 = I , d , we have
x = f ( x + a ( z I ,0 ), z I ,0 )

(20)

The system (20) with zI,0 seen as a fixed parameter is

called the boundary-layer system. From (14), we can see
that system (20) is the robot system with PD control and
I = zI,0. By virtue of Proposition 2, x = 04n is the
unique equilibrium point of (20), and it is globally asymptotically and locally exponentially stable. On the
other hand, if in (19) we set = 0, then (19) reduces to
= 04n and

I = K I E1[ a ( I , d ) a ( I + I , d )]

(21)

The system (21) is the reduced system of the singularly

perturbed system (19). Notice that 0n is the equilibrium
point of (21). Since E1a = 1, system (21) can be written
as

I = K I [ 1 ( I , d ) 1 ( I + I , d )]

(22)

Since K I > 0, system (22) is exponentially stable about

the origin. In fact, take the quadratic function P(I) =
2
I . The derivative P22 along the trajectories of (22)
is given by
P22 = 2 I T I = 2 K I [ 1 ( I , d ) 1 ( I + I , d )]T I
K I I

with > 0, where we have used the fact that 1( I ) is a

positive definite matrix, for all I  n . In this way,
P(I(t)) P(I(0)) exp ( K I t). This proves that the
reduced system (22) is exponentially stable. Finally,

Theorem 3 in [6] requires bounded derivatives of the

right-hand side of (19). In this way, notice that f2(x, zI)
depends on the centripetal and Coriolis torques. This
means that f2(x, zI) has a quadratic term on x2, and so f2(x,
zI) is not globally Lipschitz... However, f2(x, zI) has
bounded derivatives on compact sets. Consequently, a
direct application of Theorem 3 in [6] implies the existence of a positive constant max such that the singularly
perturbed system (20) is semiglobally asymptotically
stable about the origin, for all 0 < < max. In other
words, the robot system (1) under the generalized PID
controller (6) is semiglobally asymptotically and locally
exponentially stable about the point (q1, q1 , q2, q 2 ) =
(q1,d, 0, q2,d, 0), provided a small enough integral gain KI.
This concludes the proof.

Remark 4. Theorem 1 and Proposition 2 can be easily

extended to the output feedback case (with no velocity
measurement). In this case, the class of output feedback
controllers defined in [9] = D(( q 2,d q2) f(2) +
g (q1,d), where 2  n is an estimate of the rotor velocity q 2  n given by the output of the proper filtering [7]
bp
2 = diag i q 2
p + ai

(23)

where ai and bi, i = 1, , n, are positive constants, and p

def d/dt denotes the differential operator. A state space
realization of the filter (23) is  2 = A2 + B q 2 , where

A = diag{ai} and B = diag{bi}. The implementation of

the filter can be realized as w = Aw ABq2 and 2 =
w + Bq2.

Remark 5. The proof of Theorem 1 offers a geometrical

interpretation of the functioning of PID controllers. The
key property is that the boundary-layer (fast) system (20)
is the PD-controlled robot, and the reduced (slow) system (22) is the integral action. At short times '( K I )
the closed-loop trajectories converge to a neighborhood
&0 of the position qI,0 def (zI,0) which is located in the
equilibrium locus surface q = ( I ) . At large times, the
low-gain integral action starts to be important and tries
to recognize the correct equilibrium position qd = (I,d).
In this way, the closed-loop trajectories slide along the
equilibrium locus surface towards the desired equilibrium position qd.

IV. ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLE

Numerical simulations on two robot manipulators
were carried out to illustrate the performance of the proposed PID control. The objective is two fold: First, to
illustrate our claims that the closed-loop trajectories

J. Alvarez-Ramirez and I. Cervantes: PID Regulation of Robot Manipulators with Elastic Joints

37

slide along the equilibrium surface toward the desired

link position q1,d. Second, to illustrate the robustness of
the proposed linear control and the effect of the integral
gain KI (equivalently, the parameter ) on the control
performance.
4.1 Case 1. One DOF Robot Manipulator. The objective of this section is to illustrate the transient behavior
of the integral action as described in Remark 5. For simplicity in presentation, we use a one-link robot manipulator to construct the equilibrium locus (10). The robot
parameters are the following M(q1) = 1, g(q1) = 9.8sin
(q1), K = 20, J = 1, KP = 25, KI = 1.0, KD = 5.0, g (q1) =
0 and qd = 3 rad. In this case, the equilibrium locus consists in a five dimensional curve that relates every four
dimensional equilibrium point ( q1 , 0, q 2 , 0) with a
given integral action I. Figure 1 shows a projection of
this curve in the (q1, I) space. As can be observed from
Fig. 1, the closed-loop trajectories first reach the equilibrium locus. This is done by the PD action on the joint
position error. Then, by virtue of the integral action,
these trajectories slide over equilibrium locus curve
toward the desired link position. In other words, the role
of the integral action is to look for the desired equilibrium point on the equilibrium locus curve.
4.2 Case 2. Two DOF Robot Manipulator. To illustrate
the robustness of the proposed controller, we use a
two-link robot manipulator. In this case, the Coriolis/
centripetal forces induce a highly nonlinear behavior on
the system. The nominal parameters of the robot manipulator are the following,

Fig. 1. One-link robot manipulator under the proposed PID controller

(Eq. (7)). Observe the controlled trajectories slide over the
equilibrium locus to reach the desired link position.

8.77 + 1.02 cos(q 2 ) 0.76 + 0.51cos( q 2 )

M (q) =

0.62
0.76 + 0.51cos( q 2 )

7.6sin(q1 ) + 063sin(q1 + q 2 )
G ( q) = g

0.63sin(q1 + q 2 )

0.51sin(q 2 )q 2
C (q, q ) =
0.51sin(q 2 ) q 1

0.51sin(q 2 )(q 2 + q1 )

The stiffness matrix K = diag(150, 70), satisfies Property

3. In this example independent joint control is used. In
this way, proportional and derivative gain matrices are
chosen as diagonal ones and parameterized in terms of a
closed-loop time constant c,i and a closed-loop damping
coefficient i as follows: KP,i = c,2i and KD,i =2 i c,1i
(with c,1 = 0.15s1, c,2 = 0.20s1, 1 = 3.5 and 2 = 1.5).
g (q1) was set to zero. Figure 2 shows the regulation
error of the first and second link for different values of
the integral gain KI, namely a) KI = diag(30, 10), b) KI =
diag(60, 15) and c) KI = diag(150, 25). This figure
shows how the proposed controller is capable to stabilize

Fig. 2. Evolution of the position errors under the proposed control.

38

Asian Journal of Control, Vol. 5, No. 1, March 2003

the system about the desired equilibrium even in presence of uncertain gravitational and elastic torques.

V. CONCLUSIONS
This paper is devoted to study the stability of robot
manipulators with flexible joints under a class of linear
PID control. It is proved that asymptotic stability of the
desired position can be achieved, even if the gravitational and elastic forces are unknown. Specifically, it is
proved that a PD action on the joint error and an integral
action on the link error suffice to assure asymptotic stability of any desired position on a compact set. It is
shown that for given derivative and proportional gains
satisfying certain conditions, the size of the guaranteed
basin of attraction grows as the integral gain is reduced.

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Set-point Controller for Robot Manipulators with
Flexible Joints, Syst. Contr. Lett., Vol. 21, pp.
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Jose Alvarez-Ramirez was born in

San Luis Potosi, Mexico, on March
18, 1963. He received the B.Sc. degree from the Universidad Autonoma
de San Luis Potosi and the M.Sc.
degree and Ph.D. degree in Applied
Mathematics from the Universidad
Autonoma Metropolitana, in 1986,
1988 and 1993, respectively.
Since 1993 he has been with the Department of
Process Engineering at the Universidad Autonoma
Metropolitana. His research interest include control theory, dynamical systems, chaos and process control. He
has published more than 100 technical papers in different
international journals. Dr. Alvarez-Ramirez is currently
the President of the Mexican Association of Automatic
Control, which is affiliated to IFAC.

Ilse Cervantes was born in Mexico

City, in 1973. She received the Ph.D.
degree in Applied Mathematics from
the Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana, in 2000. She is currently a
full-time professor at the Postgraduate Studies Section of the Mechanical and Electrical Engineering
School (National Polytechnic Institute). Her research
interests include nonlinear systems dynamics and control,
control of electromechanical systems and real time control applications.