Challenges in motion control systems

Motion control technology is making its way into unstructured world inhabited by humans and allowing development of applications beyond structured environment of industrial plant. Such applications of motion control technology require shifting a focus to the models, control strategies and algorithms needed for systems to work, interact and cooperate with humans or other artifacts in unstructured environment. The real-world haptic interactions, associated with accurate models, is becoming important technology with potential for application in many different fields like surgery, teleoperation, cooperative work, microsystems, education etc. These developments are opening numerous challenging issues to be solved in order to develop practical and competent systems that: support the human operator, are fault tolerant, safe, easy to use, capable of adaptation to long term changes in environment... In this paper a number of the emerging issues within motion control technology are discussed including but not limited to new algorithms that allow concurrent force/position control, human-in-the loop control, control in functionally related systems.