Wang, XiangkeYu, Changbin (Brad)Lin, Zhiyun2015-12-101552-3098http://hdl.handle.net/1885/67238This paper focuses on finding a dual quaternion solution to attitude and position control for multiple rigid body coordination. Representing rigid bodies in 3-D space by unit dual quaternion kinematics, a distributed control strategy, together with a specified rooted-tree structure, are proposed to control the attitude and position of networked rigid bodies simultaneously with notion concision and nonsingularity. A property called pairwise asymptotic stability of the overall system is then analyzed and validated by an example of seven quad-rotor formation in the Urban Search And Rescue Simulation (USARSim) platform. As a separate but related issue, a maximum depth condition of the rooted tree is found with respect to error accumulation along each path using dual quaternion algebra, such that a given safety bound on attitude and position errors can be satisfied.Keywords: Attitude and position; Dual quaternion; Error accumulation; pairwise asymptotic stability (PAS); Rigid body; Asymptotic stability; Distributed parameter control systems; Forestry; Rigid structures; Trees (mathematics); Position control; Control Systems; E Attitude and position; error accumulation; multiple rigid-body coordination; pairwise asymptotic stability (PAS); unit dual quaternion201210.1109/TRO.2012.21963102016-02-24