In this dissertation, we study motion control problems in the framework of systems on finite-dimentional Lie groups. Nonholonomic motion control problems are challenging because nonlinear controllability theory does not provide an explicit procedure for constructing controls and linearization techniques, typically effective for nonlinear system analysis, fail to be useful. Our approach, distinguished from previous motion control research, is to exploit the Lie group framework since it provides a natural and mathematically rich setting for studying nonholonomic systems. In particular, we use the framework to develop explicit, structured formulas that describe system behavior and from these formulas we derive a systematic say of synthesizing controls to achieve desired motion.

As our main tool we derive averaging theory for left-invariant systems on finite-dimensional Lie groups. This theory provides basis- independent formulas which approximate system behavior on the Lie group to arbitrarily high order in given small () amplitude, periodically time-varying control inputs. We interpret the average formulas geometrically and exploit this interpretation to prove a constructive controllability theorem for the average system. The proof of this theorem provides a constructive control synthesis methodology for drift-free systems which we use to derive algorithms which synthesize sinusoidal open-loop controls. We apply the algorithms to several under-actuated mechanical control problems including problems in spacecraft attitude control, unicycle motion control and autonomous underwater vehicle control. We illustrate the effectiveness of the synthesized controls by simulation and experimentation. We show further that as a consequence of the geometry inherited from the average formulas, our algorithms can be used to produce motion controls that adapt to changes in control authority such as loss of an actuator.

We also apply our theory to synthesize controls for bilinear control systems on Rn possibly with drift. Our approach is to control the system state by controlling the state transition matrix which evolves on a matrix Lie group. We design and demonstrate a controller for an example system with drift, a simple switched electrical network.