Abstract :
This work deals with the control and guidance of a system which is composed of a disk rolling on a plane, a controlled slender rod that is pivoted through its center of mass about the diskʹs center, and a rotor with its axis fixed in the upper end of the rod (see Figs. 1 and 2). The rod is controlled in such a manner that it is always aligned along the line passing through the points O and C, where O denotes the center of the disk and C denotes the point of contact between the plane and the disk. The rotor rotates in a plane that is always perpendicular to the plane of the disk. Using the concept of path controllability, control laws are derived for the diskʹs pedalling moment and the rotorʹs torque, to steer the diskʹs motion from a point P1 to a point P2, both of them in the plane, during a given time interval [0, tf].
