Distributed Consensus for Multiple Rigid-Bodies Based on Unit Dual Quaternion∗∗This work was supported by the National Science Foundation under grant 61375072 and Nature Science Foundation of Zhejiang Province under grant LQ13F030014

This paper addresses the distributed consensus problem for multiple rigid-bodies under directed communication topology having a spanning tree with the tool of unit dual quaternion. The dynamics of rigid-bodies in 3-D are represented by unit dual quaternion with notion concision and nonsingularity. A distritbuted consensus algorithm is proposed to control attitudes and positions of all rigidbodies to the same values. We also expand the leaderless distributed algorithm to tracking consensus case with a static leader. Finally, the proposed control algorithms are simulated to illustrate the theoretical results.