Leader-follower cooperative attitude control of multiple rigid bodies

In this paper we extend our previous results on coordinated control of rotating rigid bodies to the case of teams with heterogeneous agents. We assume that only a certain subgroup of the agents (the leaders) is vested with the main control objective, that is, maintain constant relative orientation amongst themselves. The other members of the team must meet relaxed control specifications, namely, maintain their respective orientations within certain bounds, dictated by the orientation of the leaders. The proposed control laws respect the limited information each rigid body has with respect to the rest of its peers (leaders or followers), as well as with the rest of the team. Each rigid body is equipped with a feedback control law that utilizes the Laplacian matrix of the associated communication graph, and which encodes the limited communication capabilities between the team members. Similarly to the single integrator case, the convergence of the system relies on the connectivity of the communication graph. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.