English

Time Optimal Attitude Control for a Rigid Body

Optimization and Control 2007-09-19 v2

Abstract

A time optimal attitude control problem is studied for the dynamics of a rigid body. The objective is to minimize the time to rotate the rigid body to a desired attitude and angular velocity while subject to constraints on the control input. Necessary conditions for optimality are developed directly on the special orthogonal group using rotation matrices. They completely avoid singularities associated with local parameterizations such as Euler angles, and they are expressed as compact vector equations. In addition, a discrete control method based on a geometric numerical integrator, referred to as a Lie group variational integrator, is proposed to compute the optimal control input. The computational approach is geometrically exact and numerically efficient. The proposed method is demonstrated by a large-angle maneuver for an elliptic cylinder rigid body.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0709.2514,
  title  = {Time Optimal Attitude Control for a Rigid Body},
  author = {Taeyoung Lee and Melvin Leok and N. Harris McClamroch},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0709.2514},
  year   = {2007}
}

Comments

v1: 6 pages, 3 figures v2: 7 pages, 2 figures, more carefully addressed the issue of singular arcs

R2 v1 2026-06-21T09:18:04.274Z