Spacecraft Attitude Control With Nonconvex Constraints: An Explicit Reference Governor Approach

Abstract

This paper introduces a novel attitude controller for spacecraft subject to actuator saturation and multiple exclusion cone constraints. The proposed solution relies on a two-layer approach where the first layer prestabilizes the system dynamics whereas the second layer enforces constraint satisfaction by suitably manipulating the reference of the prestabilized system. In particular, constraint satisfaction is guaranteed by taking advantage of set invariance properties, whereas asymptotic convergence is achieved by implementing a non-conservative navigation field which is devoid of undesired stagnation points. Multiple numerical examples illustrate the good behavior of the proposed scheme.

Constrained Attitude Control of Uncertain Spacecraft With Appointed-Time Control Performance

“…In [41]- [42], the potential-function-based attitude stabilization control schemes are also developed and are robust to the external disturbances. A hierarchical controller is designed for the spacecraft attitude stabilization in [43], where the attitude constraints and the input saturation are both considered. Note that the methods in [40]- [43] are derived on the quaternion.…”

Guaranteed cost control of rigid‐body attitude systems under control saturation

“…The past decades have witnessed a rapid advance on theories of rigid‐body attitude control owing to its appealing advantages and fruitful applications in a broad range of areas, such as spacecraft, 1,2 unmanned aerial vehicles, 3,4 underwater vehicles 5,6 and so forth. The basic stabilization and tracking issues for rigid‐body attitude systems have been intensively addressed 7,8 and many fundamental results have been reported focusing on some problems, such as uncertainty, 4 actuator faults, 5 and state constraints 1,2 . Besides these issues, however, another benchmark issue to control a real‐world plant is also of concern, that is, guaranteeing a certain level of system performance, especially when the considered system is subject to some practical constraints such as control saturation.…”

Minimum-Time Spacecraft Attitude Motion Planning Using Objective Alternation in Derivative-Free Optimization

“…Most of existing methods for attitude motion planning with keep-out cones can be classified into the following four main groups, see also [24,27]. One group uses path planning methods to search for a path from the initial attitude to the final attitude avoiding the keep-out cones.…”

“…The last group of techniques is based on potential functions that have a minimum at the desired attitude and large values around the exclusion cones. The potential function is employed to design a control law based either on Lyapunov theory [1,15,20,22,24,26,27] or on optimal control [31]. Those methods are less computationally demanding.…”

“…In some of the cited works, attitude is represented using Euler angles [12,20,22] which are defined only locally and exhibit kinematic singularities which can limit the width of the maneuvers. In most of them [1,4,13,14,21,24,26,29,32,34], quaternions are employed. Quaternions are free of singularities but present ambiguity in representing attitude.…”