ICNPAA 2010: Mathematical Problems in
Engineering, Aerospace and Sciences

In this paper, we consider the problem of attitude synchronization for a swarm of pico-satellites. The approach proposed consists of two distinct stages. The first stage consists in using a feedback linearization technique that allows transformation of the satellite equations of motion to a set of decoupled double integrator dynamics. The second stage consists then in applying consensus algorithms for the linearized dynamics. An exchange of information between the different pico-satellites to synchronize the attitudes is carried out at this level. The obtained law is thus formulated for the transformed system. Inverse transform is then applied to extract the real control inputs to the pico-satellites. Simulation results for the BeeSat platform are included for both cases of ideal communication links and for links with packet loss and compared to state of the art approaches.