Velocity-free attitude stabilization with inertial vector measurements

Summary This paper deals with the attitude stabilization problem of a rigid body, where neither the angular velocity nor the attitude is used in the feedback; only body-referenced vector measurements are needed. The proposed control scheme is based on an angular velocity observer-like system relying solely on vector measurements. The proposed controller ensures almost global asymptotic stability and provides some interesting performance properties through an appropriate tuning of the control gains. The performance and effectiveness of the proposed control scheme are illustrated via simulation results where the control gains are adjusted using a nonlinear optimization. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.