Controlling mechanical systems with backlash—A survey

Backlash is one of the most important non-linearities that limit the performance of speed and position control in industrial, robotics, automotive, automation and other applications. The control of sys-tems with backlash has been the subject of study since the 1940's. This survey reveals that surprisingly few control innovations have been presented since the early path breaking papers that introduced the de-scribing function analysis of systems with backlash | indeed, some re-cent papers rediscover early results without quoting them! Promising developments are however taking place using adaptive and non-linear control strategies.