Global Observer-based Attitude Controller Using Direct Inertial Measurements

In this work, we address the problem of global attitude control using direct inertial measurements. When using direct inertial measurement to observe the rigid body attitude, it is shown that due to a geometrical obstruction, it is impossible to achieve global asymptotic stability. In fact, for a particular initial condition the tracking error quaternion converges to a pure imaginary quaternion formed by an eigenvector of a characteristic matrix related to the inertial constant and known vectors. Our proposition consists of adding a dynamic signal to force the rigid body to escape from such a situation. The proposed observer-based controller is synthesized based on a single Lyapunov function and a stability analysis shows that the controller stabilizes globally and asymptotically the rigid body attitude at the desired one. The effectiveness of the proposed observer-based controller is confirmed by simulation results.