Rigid body motion tracking without linear and angular velocity feedback using dual quaternions

Abstract

This paper takes advantage of a new, recently proposed representation of the combined translational and rotational dynamic equations of motion of a rigid body in terms of dual quaternions. We show that combined position and attitude tracking controllers based on dual quaternions can be developed with relatively low effort from existing attitude-only tracking controllers based on quaternions. We show this by developing an almost globally asymptotically stable nonlinear controller capable of simultaneously following time-varying position and attitude profiles without linear and angular velocity feedback based on an existing attitude-only tracking controller without angular velocity feedback.