Distributed Cooperative Attitude Synchronization and Tracking for Multiple Rigid Bodies

In this paper, distributed cooperative attitude synchronization and tracking problems are considered for multiple rigid bodies with attitudes represented by modified rodriguez parameters. Two distributed control laws are proposed and analyzed. The first control law applies a passivity approach for distributed attitude synchronization. The control law guarantees attitude synchronization without the requirement for absolute angular velocity measurements and relative angular velocity measurements between neighboring rigid bodies. The second control law incorporates a time-varying reference attitude, where the reference attitude is allowed to be available to only a subset of the group members under general directed information exchange. The control law guarantees that all rigid bodies track the time-varying reference attitude as long as a virtual leader whose attitude is the time-varying reference attitude has a directed path to all other rigid bodies in the group. Simulation results are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the two control laws.