Attitude optimization by extremum seeking for rigid bodies actuated by internal rotors only

In this paper, we investigate the stabilizing effect of an extremum seeking control law on a class of underactuated Lagrangian control systems with symmetry. Our study is motivated by the problem of attitude optimization for satellites with reaction wheels. The goal is to minimize the value of an analytically unknown configuration-dependent objective function without being reliant on measurements of the current configuration and velocity. This work extends our previous work on extremum seeking control for fully actuated mechanical systems on Lie groups in the absence of dissipation. We show that the earlier method for fully actuated systems can also be successfully applied to a certain class of underactuated systems, which are controlled by internal momentum exchange devices (reaction wheels) so that the total momentum is conserved. Conservation of momentum allows us to reduce the control system to a system on a smaller state manifold. The reduced control system is not of Lagrangian form but fully actuated. For the reduced control system we prove that the extremum seeking method leads to practical uniform asymptotic stability. We illustrate our findings by the example of a rigid body with internal rotors.