Passivity motivated controller design for flexible structures

Stabilization of flexible structures with naturally passive input/output pairs have been extensively studied in the past. For nonpassive pairs, direct negative feedback requires small gain and has severely limited gain and phase margins. This paper presents an observed-based extension of the passive controller design parameters: passive output map and observer gain are discussed based on the performance, robustness, and noise sensitivity considerations. Experimental results have demonstrated the basic viability of this method.