Abstract
The motion of animals and gymnasts in the air as well as free flying space robots without thrusters are subjected to nonholonomic constraints generated by the law of conservation of angular momentum. The purpose of this paper is to derive analytical posture control laws for free flying objects in the air. We propose the bang-bang control method for trajectory planning of a 3 link mechanical system with initial angular momentum. This technique is used to reduce the DOF (degrees of freedom) at first switching phase and to determine the control inputs to steer the reduced order system to the desired position. Computer simulations for motion planning of an athlete approximated by 3 link, namely platform diving, are provided to verify the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme.