N.H. McClamroch

TL;DR: Local equilibrium controllability of shape controlled multibody systems is studied and important properties are obtained for symmetric products of horizontal shape control vector fields and a potential vector field that is dependent on an advected parameter.

TL;DR: In this article, an autonomous spacecraft docking scheme is proposed for obtaining position and orientation estimates of a spacecraft with respect to a docking platform and control systems for the rotational and translational motion of the spacecraft.

TL;DR: In this paper, simple and easy-to-use conditions are developed which guarantee global stability of two linearly interconnected nonlinear systems, which consist of two scalar frequency response conditions of Popov type on the linear dynamical subsystems and inequalities involving the sector bounds and parameters in the problem; the inequalities have a simple graphical interpretation in terms of the product of the interconnection coefficients.

TL;DR: In this article, the attitude dynamics of a rigid body with symmetry is considered and optimal control problems are formulated and efficient computational procedures are proposed for attitude dynamics with symmetry, where the rigid body acts under a gravitational potential and under a structured control moment that respects the symmetry.

TL;DR: Nonlinear control theory is used to show that the base body translation and rotation is controllable via two independent proof mass actuators; an open loop maneuver strategy is developed.