Leader-Following Attitude Consensus of Multiple Rigid Body Systems with an Uncertain Leader Over Jointly Connected Switching Networks

Existing results on the leader-following consensus problem for multiple uncertain rigid body systems with an uncertain leader are limited to acyclic switching networks and require full availability of the leader’s angular velocity states. In this paper, by leveraging an adaptive distributed observer for the uncertain leader system, we solve the leader-following consensus problem for multiple rigid body systems with an uncertain leader over jointly connected switching networks, which may be disconnected at any instant. Furthermore, the proposed control law depends only on the output of the leader system for the angular velocity and is robust to bounded external disturbances with unknown bounds. A numerical example is provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed design.