Robust attitude tracking control for a rigid spacecraft under input delays and actuator errors

ABSTRACTAttitude control of a rigid spacecraft under input delays, disturbances, parameter uncertainties, actuator errors, and constraints is a challenging problem. In this paper, these problems are considered simultaneously, and a robust control approach to attitude tracking of a rigid spacecraft is exploited. The design methodology is based on three steps: (1) compensating input delays by using the backstepping technique, (2) design of a disturbance observer for the delayed system by using the super-twisting algorithm to estimate unknown internal and external disturbances, then adding a feedforward compensation law based on the estimated signal to the backstepping controller to attenuate the effects of disturbances, (3) employing a robust least-square scheme to map the specified control command on the redundant actuators in the presence of actuator error, including actuator magnitude deviation and misalignment, with regard to actuator amplitude and rate constraints. The effectiveness of the proposed alg...