We present a geometric formulation for the energy shaping problem. The central objective is the initiation of a more systematic exploration of energy shaping with the aim of de- termining whether a given system can be stabilized using energy shaping feedback. We investigate the partial differential equations for the kinetic energy shaping problem using the formal theory of partial differential equations. The main contribution is sufficient conditions for integrability of these partial differential equations. We couple these results with the integrability results for potential energy shaping. This gives some new avenues for answering key questions in energy shaping that have not been addressed to this point.

The well known Brockett condition - a topological obstruction to the existence of smooth stabilizing feedback laws - has engendered a large body of work on discontinuous feedback stabilization. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a class of control-Lyapunov function from which it is possible to specify a (possibly discontinuous) stabilizing feedback law. For control-affine systems with unbounded controls Sontag has described a Lyapunov pair which gives rise to an explicit stabilizing feedback law smooth away from the origin - Sontag’s “universal construction” of Artstein’s Theorem. In this work we introduce the more general “lower bounded control-Lyapunov function” and a “universal formula” for nonaffine systems. Our “universal formula” is a static state feedback which is measurable and locally bounded but possibly discontinuous. Thus, for the corresponding closed loop system, the classical notion of solution need not apply. To deal with this situation we use the generalized solution due to Filippov.

An input-to-state stability theory, which subsumes results of circle criterion type, is developed in the context of a class of infinite-dimensional systems. The generic system is of Lur’e type: a feedback interconnection of a well-posed infinite-dimensional linear system and a nonlinearity. The class of nonlinearities is subject to a (generalized) sector condition and contains, as particular subclasses, both static nonlinearities and hysteresis operators of Preisach type.

This paper formulates optimal control problems for rigid bodies in a geometric manner and it presents computational procedures based on this geometric formulation for numerically solving these optimal control problems. The dynamics of each rigid body is viewed as evolving on a configuration manifold that is a Lie group. Discrete-time dynamics of each rigid body are developed that evolve on the configuration manifold according to a discrete version of Hamilton’s principle so that the computations preserve geometric features of the dynamics and guarantee evolution on the configuration manifold; these discrete-time dynamics are referred to as Lie group variational integrators. Rigid body optimal control problems are formulated as discrete-time optimization problems for discrete Lagrangian/Hamiltonian dynamics, to which standard numerical optimization algorithms can be applied. This general approach is illustrated by presenting results for several different optimal control problems for a single rigid body and for multiple interacting rigid bodies. The computational advantages of the approach, that arise from correctly modeling the geometry, are discussed.

This paper proposes a methodology to stabilize relative equilibria in a model of identical, steered particles moving in three-dimensional Euclidean space. Exploiting the Lie group structure of the resulting dynamical system, the stabilization problem is reduced to a consensus problem on the Lie algebra. The resulting equilibria correspond to parallel, circular and helical formations. We first derive the stabilizing control laws in the presence of all-to-all communication. Providing each agent with a consensus estimator, we then extend the results to a general setting that allows for unidirectional and time-varying communication topologies.