Complementary Filtering on SO(3) for Attitude Estimation with Scalar Measurements

Abstract

This paper proposes a complementary filter on SO(3) for attitude estimation from scalar measurements corresponding to projections of known inertial vectors onto body-frame sensing directions. The observer evolves directly on SO(3) and employs a constant-gain innovation tailored to the scalar-output structure. Under suitable persistence-of-excitation conditions, almost-global asymptotic stability is established when at least three inertial vectors are measured along a common body-frame direction. For configurations involving only two scalar measurements, sufficient conditions for asymptotic convergence are derived together with an explicit characterization of the region of attraction. Numerical simulations illustrate the proposed results.

arXiv commentAccepted to the 65th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC 2026)