Structure Preserving Reduced Attitude Control of Gyroscopes

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel geometric control method for reorienting gyroscope axes that preserves inherent stability, incorporates actuator dynamics, and is validated through simulations and experiments on a tricopter.

Contribution

It introduces a structure-preserving reduced attitude controller for gyroscopes that maintains stability and accounts for actuator dynamics, with experimental validation.

Findings

Controller achieves almost-globally asymptotic stability.

Incorporates actuator dynamics for practical implementation.

Demonstrated improved performance over conventional methods.

Abstract

We design a reduced attitude controller for reorienting the spin axis of a gyroscope in a geometric control framework. The proposed controller preserves the inherent gyroscopic stability associated with a spinning axis-symmetric rigid body. The equations of motion are derived in two frames: a non-spinning frame to show the gyroscopic stability, and a body-fixed spinning frame for deriving the controller. The proposed controller is designed such that it retains the gyroscopic stability structure in the closed loop and renders the desired equilibrium almost-globally asymptotically stable. Due to the time-critical nature of the control input, in particular its sensitivity with respect to delays/neglected dynamics, the controller is extended to incorporate the effect of actuator dynamics for practical implementation. Thereafter, a comparison in performance is shown between the proposed controller and a conventional reduced attitude geometric controller with numerical simulation. The controller is validated experimentally on a spinning tricopter.