Attitude Synchronization of Rigid Bodies With Event-Triggered Communication

This article addresses the challenge of attitude synchronization of a group of rigid bodies (considered to be agents) with zero final angular velocity. A collaborative control strategy is proposed to tackle this issue, using decentralized consensus within a leader-follower scheme, and the communication between agents is activated by events. The attitude is parameterized by the unit quaternion. The control law incorporates an event function specifying the moment when the
$i$
-th agent should transmit attitude and angular velocity information to its neighbors. The communication topology between agents is modeled using a connected and undirected graph. The event-triggered communication produces asynchronous information exchange, reducing data traffic without compromising system performance. Furthermore, in practical scenarios such as networks of satellites or aerial robots, the proposed strategy could reduce the use of communication channel bandwidth. The Lyapunov method is utilized to analyze the stability of the overall system. Numerical simulation results confirm the proposal’s effectiveness.