Leader-following Attitude Consensus of Multiple Rigid Body Systems by an Adaptive Distributed Observer Approach

Abstract

The leader-following attitude consensus problem of multiple rigid body systems has been studied by the distributed observer approach. The distributed observer is able to estimate the reference signals generated by a target system under the assumption that each rigid body system knows the two system matrices of the target system. In this paper, we propose an adaptive distributed observer approach which estimates not only the state of the target system, but also the two systems matrices of the target system. Utilizing this adaptive distributed observer, we are able to solve the leader-following attitude consensus problem without assuming that each rigid body system knows the two system matrices of the target system.