A Finite-Time Stable Observer for Relative Attitude Estimation

Relative motion estimation of one rigid body with respect to another is a problem that has immediate applications to formations and maneuvers involving multiple unmanned vehicles or collision avoidance between vehicles. A finite-time stable observer for relative attitude estimation of a rigid object using onboard sensors on an unmanned vehicle, is developed and presented here. This observer assumes sensor inputs from onboard vision and inertial sensors, with the vision sensors measuring at least three points on the object whose relative locations with respect to a body-fixed frame on the object are also assumed to be known. In the absence of any measurement noise, the estimated relative attitude is shown to converge to the actual relative pose in a finite-time stable manner. Numerical simulations indicate that this relative attitude observer is robust to persistent measurement errors and converges to a bounded neighborhood of the true attitude.