  In this paper, we propose a novel distributed formation control strategy,
which is based on the measurements of relative position of neighbors, with
global orientation estimation in 3-dimensional space. Since agents do not share
a common reference frame, orientations of the local reference frame are not
aligned with each other. Under the orientation estimation law, a rotation
matrix that identifies orientation of local frame with respect to a common
frame is obtained by auxiliary variables. The proposed strategy includes a
combination of global orientation estimation and formation control law. Since
orientation of each agent is estimated in the global sense, formation control
strategy ensures that the formation globally exponentially converges to the
desired formation in 3-dimensional space.
