A global observer for attitude and gyro biases from vector measurements

Abstract: We consider the classical problem of estimating the attitude and gyro biases of a rigid body from vector measurements and a triaxial rate gyro. We propose a simple "geometry-free" nonlinear observer with guaranteed uniform global asymptotic convergence and local exponential convergence; the stability analysis, which relies on a strict Lyapunov function, is rather simple. The excellent behavior of the observer is illustrated through a detailed numerical simulation.