Nonlinear Attitude and Formation Estimation Spacecraft And Multi-Agent Systems

This dissertation examines the state and parameter estimation problem of monolithic spacecraft and multi-agent systems in conjunction with the control algorithms. Nonlinear filtering techniques are investigated and applied to the problems of attitude estimation and control of monolithic spacecraft, distributed flltering for attitude estimation and control of satellite formation flying (SFF), and estimation and control of a multi-agent system in consensus tracking with uncertain dynamic model. The main objective is to investigate the performance of nonlinear filtering techniques under fault-free and fault-prone scenarios. In essence, the core of this research has been placed on identifying techniques to improve the efficiency and reduce the variance of estimations in nonlinear filtering. The research is primarily dedicated to the investigation of adaptive unscented Kalman Filter (AUKF) and particle Filter (PF). A nonlinear filtering technique has been proposed for sequential joint estimation of a multi-agent system in consensus tracking with uncertain dynamic model. The new filter is called marginalized unscented particle Filter (MUPF). The proposed filter uses the Rao-Blackwellised principle to couple the particle filtering technique with unscented transform algorithm