A simple approach to invariant hybrid control

We give a geometrical description of Raibert and Craig's hybrid force/position control method (1981). Our description is coordinate free, hence answering the criticism of the original work that it was not transformation invariant. However, our approach avoids the complications introduced in the work of Lipkin and Duffy (1988). This simplification is achieved by recognising that velocity screws and wrenches are different geometrical objects and then keeping them separate throughout the discussion. So we do not use any metric properties of the screw space of infinitesimal rigid body motions. Rather, we employ the duality between the vector space of screws and the linear functionals on them. We give several examples and show how changes of coordinates should be handled.