Abstract
This paper deals with a control approach dedicated to stable limit cycle generation for underactuated mechanical systems. The proposed approach is based on partial nonlinear feedback linearization and dynamic control for optimal periodic reference trajectories tracking. The computation of the reference trajectories is performed in order to optimize the behavior of the whole dynamics of the system and especially its zero dynamics at the end of each cycle. Simulation results as well as experiments show the performance and the efficiency of the proposed control scheme.