Abstract
This paper proposes a special form of the recursive Newton-Euler formulation that satisfies the skew-symmetric property, which is a necessary condition to ensure global convergence in a class of regressor-based identification and adaptive control (Slotine, 1987a & 1987b; Craig, 1987). For general multibody systems, such a special form has been developed in a reduced Euler-Lagrange formulation, but not in the Newton-Euler formulation, which has been very popular in the computational analysis of large scale systems. The paper successfully constructs a pair of inertia and Coriolis-centrifugal matrices for a “skew-symmetric” recursive Newton-Euler formulation, which can be used in both dynamics simulations and control applications.