Control of port-Hamiltonian systems

Energy plays a central role in the control of physical systems since the "shape" of the energy is related to the stability properties of the system. In fact, it is well known from physics, that every configuration characterized by a (local) minimum of the energy exhibits a (locally) stable behavior. Unfortunately the configuration that naturally corresponds to a minimum of the energy is very seldom the desired configuration for the system. © 2007 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.