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Main Authors: Gonçalves, Francisco M. F. R., Bena, Ryan M., Pérez-Arancibia, Néstor O.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.25985
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author Gonçalves, Francisco M. F. R.
Bena, Ryan M.
Pérez-Arancibia, Néstor O.
author_facet Gonçalves, Francisco M. F. R.
Bena, Ryan M.
Pérez-Arancibia, Néstor O.
contents Over the past few decades, continuous quaternion-based attitude control has been proven highly effective for driving rotational systems that can be modeled as rigid bodies, such as satellites and drones. However, methods rooted in this approach do not enforce the existence of a unique closed-loop (CL) equilibrium attitude-error quaternion (AEQ); and, for rotational errors about the attitude-error Euler axis larger than πrad, their proportional-control effect diminishes as the system state moves away from the stable equilibrium of the CL rotational dynamics. In this paper, we introduce a new type of attitude control law that more effectively leverages the attitude-error Euler axis-angle information to guarantee a unique CL equilibrium AEQ and to provide greater flexibility in the use of proportional-control efforts. Furthermore, using two different control laws as examples-through the construction of a strict Lyapunov function for the CL dynamics-we demonstrate that the resulting unique equilibrium of the CL rotational system can be enforced to be uniformly asymptotically stable. To assess and demonstrate the functionality and performance of the proposed approach, we performed numerical simulations and executed dozens of real-time tumble-recovery maneuvers using a small quadrotor. These simulations and flight tests compellingly demonstrate that the proposed axis-angle-based method achieves superior flight performance-compared with that obtained using a high-performance quaternion-based controller-in terms of stabilization time.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_25985
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A New Type of Axis-Angle Attitude Control Law for Rotational Systems: Synthesis, Analysis, and Experiments
Gonçalves, Francisco M. F. R.
Bena, Ryan M.
Pérez-Arancibia, Néstor O.
Robotics
Systems and Control
Over the past few decades, continuous quaternion-based attitude control has been proven highly effective for driving rotational systems that can be modeled as rigid bodies, such as satellites and drones. However, methods rooted in this approach do not enforce the existence of a unique closed-loop (CL) equilibrium attitude-error quaternion (AEQ); and, for rotational errors about the attitude-error Euler axis larger than πrad, their proportional-control effect diminishes as the system state moves away from the stable equilibrium of the CL rotational dynamics. In this paper, we introduce a new type of attitude control law that more effectively leverages the attitude-error Euler axis-angle information to guarantee a unique CL equilibrium AEQ and to provide greater flexibility in the use of proportional-control efforts. Furthermore, using two different control laws as examples-through the construction of a strict Lyapunov function for the CL dynamics-we demonstrate that the resulting unique equilibrium of the CL rotational system can be enforced to be uniformly asymptotically stable. To assess and demonstrate the functionality and performance of the proposed approach, we performed numerical simulations and executed dozens of real-time tumble-recovery maneuvers using a small quadrotor. These simulations and flight tests compellingly demonstrate that the proposed axis-angle-based method achieves superior flight performance-compared with that obtained using a high-performance quaternion-based controller-in terms of stabilization time.
title A New Type of Axis-Angle Attitude Control Law for Rotational Systems: Synthesis, Analysis, and Experiments
topic Robotics
Systems and Control
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.25985