Rest-to-rest Maneuvering of a Nonholonomic Control Moment Gyroscope

This paper studies a restricted control moment gyroscope (CMG), which constitutes a remarkable example of a nonholonomic system that arises as a consequence of its symmetry properties. A nonholonomic control system formulation is first introduced for the restricted CMG dynamics. The geometric phase technique is then used to design a feedback control algorithm for the control of the CMG system to a desired equilibrium. The effectiveness of the feedback control algorithm is illustrated through both numerical simulations and experimental results