Attitude control via a feedback integrator based observer

A unified observer based attitude control is designed in this article. The novel feature of the proposed design is that the observer is amenable to Euclidean numerical integration schemes such as Euler integration. A feedback integrator term is introduced to ensure that the obtained rotation estimate converges to the manifold of rotations. This observer based control design affords significantly simpler numerical integration as opposed to discrete mechanics based integration. A formal proof of this procedure is constructed via novel application of height function based invariance methods. Simulation results indicate robustness of the proposed scheme to noise and asymmetry in inertia modeling.