On reorienting linked rigid bodies using internal motions

Kinematic algorithms are provided for reorienting some systems of linked rigid bodies floating in space. Since they are floating in space, they conserve both angular and linear momentum. The conservation of linear momentum is an integrable constraint; the conservation of angular momentum is not. The authors dualize the angular momentum constraint so that the problem of reorientation can be viewed as a steering problem for a drift-free control system which obeys these constraints. Explicit solutions via an algorithm are given for several sample systems. A hardware demonstration is also presented