Stabilization of a Coordinated Network of Rotating Rigid Bodies
Sujit Nair and Naomi Ehrich Leonard
Proc. 43rd IEEE Conference on Decision and Control,
2004, p.4690-4695.
In this paper we present a stabilizing and
coordinating control law for a network of spinning rigid bodies
with unstable dynamics. The control law stabilizes each rigid
body to spin about its unstable, intermediate axis while also
aligning all of the spinning rigid bodies so that their
orientations in inertial space are identical. The control law is
derived using kinetic energy shaping for stabilization and
potential shaping for coupling. The coupled system is Lagrangian
with symmetry, and energy methods are used to prove stability and
coordinated behavior.