Unscented Filtering in a Unit Quaternion Space for Spacecraft Attitude Estimation

A new approach to the straightforward implementation of the unscented filter in a unit quaternion space is proposed for spacecraft attitude estimation. Since the unscented filter is formulated in a vector space and the unit quaternions do not belong to a vector space but lie on a nonlinear manifold, the weighted sum of quaternion samples does not produce a unit quaternion estimate. To overcome this difficulty, a method of weighted mean computation for quaternions is derived in rotational space, leading to a quaternion with unit norm. A quaternion multiplication is used for predicted covariance computation and quaternion update, which makes a quaternion in a filter lie in the unit quaternion space. Since the quaternion process noise increases the uncertainty in attitude orientation, modeling it either as the vector part of a quaternion or as a rotation vector is considered. Simulation results illustrate that the proposed approach successfully estimates spacecraft attitude for large initial errors and high tip-off rates, and modeling the quaternion process noise as a rotation vector is more optimal than handling it as the vector part of a quaternion.