Inertial Vector Based Attitude Stabilization of Rigid Body Without Angular Velocity Measurements

Abstract: We address the problem of attitude stabilization of a rigid body, in which neither the angular velocity nor the instantaneous measurements of the attitude are used in the feedback, only body vector measurements are needed. The design of the controller is based on an angular velocity observer-like system, where a first order linear auxiliary system based directly on vector measurements is introduced. The introduction of gain matrices provides more tuning flexibility and better results compared with existing works. The proposed controller ensures almost global asymptotic stability. The performance and effectiveness of the proposed solution are illustrated via simulation results where the gains of the controller are adjusted using non linear optimization.