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 heterogenous agents. We assume that only a certain subgroup of the agents (the leaders) are vested with the main control objective, that is, maintain constant relative orientation amongst themselves. The rest of the team must meet relaxed control specifications, namely maintain their respective orientations within certain limits 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 control law that utilizes the Laplacian matrix of the associated communication graph, which encodes the communication links between the team members. Similarly to the linear case, the convergence of the multi-agent system relies on the connectivity of the communication graph.