Nonlinear Attitude Estimation Using Intermittent Linear Velocity and Vector Measurements

TL;DR

This paper develops a nonlinear attitude estimation method on SO(3) that combines continuous measurements with intermittent data, ensuring stability and robustness in practical scenarios.

Contribution

It introduces a hybrid attitude observer that guarantees almost global asymptotic stability using intermittent measurements, extending previous continuous measurement approaches.

Findings

The continuous observer achieves almost global asymptotic stability.

The hybrid observer maintains stability with intermittent measurements.

Simulations demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods.

Abstract

This paper investigates the problem of continuous attitude estimation on $SO(3)$ using continuous angular velocity and linear acceleration measurements as well as intermittent linear velocity and inertial vector measurements. First, we propose a nonlinear observer for the case where all the measurements are continuous and almost global asymptotic stability (AGAS) is shown using the notion of almost global input-to-state stability (ISS) on manifolds. Thereafter, a hybrid attitude observer, with AGAS guarantees, is proposed in terms of intermittent linear velocity and vector measurements. Numerical simulation results are presented to illustrate the performance of the proposed hybrid observer.