Optimal Attitude Determination from Vector Sensors Using Fast Analytical Singular Value Decomposition

Abstract

A novel algorithm is proposed in this paper to solve the optimal attitude determination formulation from vector observation pairs, that is, the Wahba problem. We propose here a fast analytic singular value decomposition (SVD) approach to obtain the optimal attitude matrix. The derivations and mandatory proofs are presented to clarify the theory and support its feasibility. Through simulation experiments, the proposed algorithm is validated. The results show that it maintains the same attitude determination accuracy and robustness with conventional methodologies but significantly reduces the computation time.