Almost global attitude stabilization of a rigid body for both internal and external actuation schemes

Recent developments in the attitude control of a rigid body include the development of almost globally stabilizing coordinate-free control laws. However, all of these results focus on external actuation. In this paper, we observe that the frequently used way of stabilization by error functions can also be given a Hamiltonian interpretation. We show that there exists a class of control laws which are applicable for both external and internal actuation. We also construct such control laws, motivated by the potential energy of a spinning top.