Abstract: We followup on a suggestion of Bullo and Lewis (CDC 2000) concerning the importance of geometric homogeneity for mechanical systems. It is shown that configuration controllability results for a large class of mechanical systems with drift can be recovered by considering a class of nonlinear dynamical systems satisfying certain homogeneity conditions. These theorems generalize the configuration controllability results for simple mechanical control systems found in Lewis and Murray (SIAM J.C.O. 1997).

Geometric Homogeneity and Configuration Controllability of Nonlinear Systems