Robust global asymptotic attitude synchronization by hybrid control

We apply recent results on robust global asymptotic stabilization of the attitude of a single rigid body to the problem of synchronizing the attitude of a network of rigid bodies using graph-local information. The proposed synchronization scheme relies on a hysteretic hybrid feedback based on the unit quaternion representation of rigid body attitude to achieve a global synchronization result that is robust to measurement noise. While the hysteretic feedback manages a trade-off between robustness to measurement noise and unwinding, the scheme necessitates the communication of a single binary logic variable between neighboring rigid bodies.