Constrained Relative Attitude Determination for Two-Vehicle Formations

摘要

This paper studies constrained relative attitude determination of a formation of two vehicles. A deterministicnsolution for the relative attitude between the two vehicleswith line-of-sight observations between themand a commonnobject observed by both vehicles is presented. The constraintmay either be a planar constraint or triangle constraintnof the observed vectors. The differences between both are shown. Either constraint allows for a solution withoutnhaving toknowthe locationof the commonobject.Thepresented solutionwiththe constraint represents theminimumnnumber ofmeasurements required to determine the relative attitude and no ambiguities are present. To quantify thenperformance of the algorithm the covariance of the attitude error is derived using a linearized error model from anleast-squares point of view. A sensitivity analysis is also performed in order to assess how out-of-plane observationsnaffect the overall solution. Simulation results are provided to assess the performance of the proposed new approach.