Simple global output feedback tracking control for one-degree-of-freedom Euler-Lagrange systems

The difficult problem of global tracking control without velocity measurement of so-called Euler-Lagrange systems has been of growing interest for the last few years. In this note, a nice property of one degree of freedom Euler-Lagrange systems is highlighted, which in particular allows to obtain a new solution to that problem of tracking control for this class of systems. The solution is under the form of a linear-like observer-based controller which gives fairly good results, as illustrated in simulation. Copyright (C) 1998 IFAC.