Can we make a robot ballerina perform a pirouette? Orbital stabilization of periodic motions of underactuated mechanical systems

This paper provides an introduction to several problems and techniques related to controlling periodic motions of dynamical systems. In particular, we consider planning periodic motions and designing feedback controllers for orbital stabilization. We review classical and recent design methods based on the Poincare first-return map and the transverse linearization. We begin with general nonlinear systems and then specialize to a class of underactuated mechanical systems for which a particularly rich structure allows many of the problems to be solved analytically. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.