this dissertation addresses several problems related to distributed cooperative state estimation and control design for multi-agent rigid-body autonomous systems, namely bearing-based distributed pose estimation, distributed attitude estimation on so(3), and global attitude synchronization on so(3). we consider the distributed pose estimation problem for multi-agent rigid-body systems, under a directed graph topology, assuming that two agents have access to their respective poses. first, we consider the case where all agents have static positions and time-varying orientations, and propose two distributed pose estimation schemes evolving on so(3) × r 3 and so(3) × r 3 × r 3 , with almost global asymptotic stability guarantees. thereafter, we consider the case where the agents positions and orientations are time-varying, and propose a distributed pose observer evolving on so(3)×r 3 , with local exponential stability guarantees. the three proposed estimation schemes rely on individual angular velocity (and linear velocity in the case of agents with time-varying positions) measurements and local information exchange between neighboring agents (relative timevarying bearing measurements and estimated poses). next, we consider the problem of distributed attitude estimation of multi-agent systems, evolving on so(3), relying on individual angular velocity and relative attitude measurements, under an undirected, connected and acyclic communication graph topology. we propose two distributed attitude observers on so(3); a continuous version and a hybrid version, endowed respectively with almost global asymptotic stability and global asymptotic stability guarantees. in addition, the proposed hybrid attitude estimation scheme is used to solve the pose estimation problem of multi-agent rigid-body systems, with global asymptotic stability guarantees, relying on individual linear and angular velocity measurements as well as local relative bearing and relative orientation measurements. finally, we propose a distributed hybrid attitude synchronization scheme (with and without individual velocity measurements) for a group of rigid body systems evolving on so(3) under an undirected, connected and acyclic communication graph topology, with global asymptotic stability guarantees.