Attitude alignment of a team of UAVs under decentralized information structure

In this paper, we discuss nonlinear centralized and decentralized information protocols enabling a team of unmanned air-vehicles (UAVs) to reach consensus regarding the attitude of the formation center. The last is averaged over all UAV's attitudes and not known a-priori. The maneuver consists of an horizontal alignment starting at different attitudes while keeping the formation center constant. During the maneuver, each vehicle controls the vertical rate of climb based on sensed information about the relative attitude of only the nearest vehicles. The rate is bounded by the performance capabilities of the vehicles.