Distributed attitude consensus among multiple networked spacecraft

Abstract

In this paper we consider the distributed attitude consensus problem among multiple networked spacecraft in deep space, which extends the standard information consensus results in the literature to rigid body rotational dynamics. We propose control laws for three different cases. In the first case, multiple spacecraft align their attitudes during formation maneuvers with zero final angular velocities under an undirected communication topology. In the second case, attitudes are aligned in the presence of nonzero final angular velocities under an undirected communication topology. In the third case, attitude consensus under a directed information exchange topology is addressed. Simulation results for attitude consensus among six spacecraft show the effectiveness of our approach.