Leader-follower Attitude Synchronization of Rigid-body Systems on SO(3)

Abstract: This paper addresses the leader-follower attitude synchronization problem on $\mathrm{SO}(3)$ for a group of heterogeneous rigid body systems. The reference attitude, represented by a virtual leader, is accessible only to a subset of agents in the network. The follower communication graph is assumed to be undirected and acyclic, and every agent is connected to the virtual leader through a path in the corresponding augmented graph (including the virtual leader). An observer-based distributed control strategy, endowed with almost global asymptotic stability guarantees, is proposed to synchronize all rigid-body attitudes with a desired time-varying reference attitude. An observer-based distributed control, with reduced complexity, as well an observerless distributed control strategy are also developed for the constant-reference case, with almost global asymptotic stability guarantees. Numerical simulations are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness and performance of the proposed distributed control strategies.