The exponential and Cayley map on SE(3) are the prevailing coordinate maps used in Lie group integration schemes for rigid body and flexible body systems. Such geometric integrators are the Munthe-Kaas and generalized-alpha schemes, which involve the differential and its directional derivative of the respective coordinate map. Relevant closed form expressions, which were reported over the last two decades, are scattered in the literature, and some are reported without proof. This paper provides a reference summarizing all relevant closed form relations along with the relevant proofs. including the right-trivialized differential of the exponential and Cayley map and their directional derivatives (resembling the Hessian). The latter gives rise to an implicit generalized-alpha scheme for rigid/flexible multibody systems in terms of the Cayley map with improved computational efficiency.

The control of free-floating robots requires dealing with several challenges. The motion of such robots evolves on a continuous manifold described by the Special Euclidean Group of dimension 3, known as SE(3). Methods from finite horizon Linear Quadratic Regulators (LQR) control have gained recent traction in the robotics community. However, such approaches are inherently solving an unconstrained optimization problem and hence are unable to respect the manifold constraints imposed by the group structure of SE(3). This may lead to small errors, singularity problems and double cover issues depending on the choice of coordinates to model the floating base motion. In this paper, we propose the use of canonical exponential coordinates of SE(3) and the associated Exponential map along with its differentials to embed this structure in the theory of finite horizon LQR controllers.