The essence of this work is the control of electromechanical systems, such as manipulators, electric machines, and power converters. The common thread that links together the results presented here is the passivity property, which is at present in numerous electrical and mechanical systems, and which has great relevance in control engineering at this time. Amongst other topics, the authors cover: Euler-Lagrange Systems, Mechanical Systems, Generalised AC Motors, Induction Motor Control, Robots with AC Drives, and Perspectives and Open Problems. The authors have extensive experience of research and application in the field of control of electromechanical systems, which they have summarised here in this self-contained volume. While written in a strictly mathematical way, it is also elementary, and will be accessible to a wide-ranging audience, including graduate students as well as practitioners and researchers in this field.
About the Author:

Romeo Ortega obtained the Docteur D`Etat from the Polytechnical Institute of Grenoble, France in 1984 . He then joined the National University of Mexico, where he worked until 1989. He was a Visiting Professor at the University of Illinois, USA, in 1987-88 and at McGill University, Canada, in 1991-1992, and a Fellow of the Japan Society for Promotion of Science in 1990-1991. Currently he is in the Laboratoire des Signaux et Systèmes of Supélec in Gif-sur-Yvette, France, where he holds a position of Directeur de Recherche from the CNRS. His research interests are in the fields of nonlinear and adaptive control with special emphasis on applications. He is a co-author of the Springer-Verlag book Nonlinear Adaptive Control Design and Applications, and has published more than 100 scientific papers in international journals. Dr Ortega has been the chairman of the IEEE Working Group on Adaptive Control and Systems Identification, of the IFAC Technical Committee on Adaptive Control and Tuning and of the Automatica Paper Prize Award Committee. He has served as Associate Editor for various scientific journals. Dr Ortega is a member of the IFAC Technical Board and a Fellow of the IEEE.

Antonio Loría has been a research fellow at the University of Twente, NTNU Norway and UCSB, California. Currently, he has a tenure position as Associate Researcher with the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), France. He is author of more than seventy scientific journal and conference papers as well as four book chapters in control theory; of these publications, more than 20 are on robot control. He is co-author of Control of Robot Manipulators in Joint Space by R. Kelly, V. Santibáñez and A. Loría, (1-85233-994-2).

Hebertt Sira-Ramirez has published his work in 4 books, 20 book chapters, many of them in Springer-Verlag volumes, 114 journal publications in credited, refereed, journals and over 192 specialized international conferences. He obtained his MSEE and his PhD, both from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, USA) in 1972 and 1977, respectively. He worked as a professor, and researcher, for 28 years at the Universidad de Los Andes in Merida, Venezuela, and has worked for the last 7 years in a Scientific Research Institute in Mexico City (Cinvestav-IPN). He is a member of the IFAC Technical Committee on Non-Linear Control Systems.