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Distributed Global Velocity-free Attitude Coordination Control for Multiple Spacecraft without Unwinding

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  • Control Theory and Applications
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Abstract

The distributed global velocity-free attitude coordination control problem for multiple formation spacecraft without unwinding phenomenon and with disturbance is investigated in this paper. Initially, a fixed-time observer is constructed to estimate the states of the virtual leader in fixed time. For the formation spacecraft with attitude-only measurements, a filter system is developed. To estimate the disturbance, a fixed-time extended state observer is proposed. With the application of the fixed-time observers and the filter system, a distributed global velocity-free attitude coordination controller is designed to grantee that the leader with time-varying trajectory can be tracked coordinately by the formation spacecraft, where the unwinding problem of the spacecraft can be avoided. In addition, a distributed velocity-free attitude coordination controller on the basis of the fixed-time extended state observer is designed to compensate the effect of the lump disturbance. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed controller is demonstrated by numerical simulation.

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Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 61973167) and the Jiangsu Province Key Research and Development Project (BE2017161).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Electrical Engineering, Yancheng Institute of Technology, Jiangsu, 224051, China

    Zhihao Zhu & Zhi Gao

  2. School of Automation, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Jiangsu, 210094, China

    Yu Guo

Authors
  1. Zhihao Zhu
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  2. Zhi Gao
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  3. Yu Guo
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Zhihao Zhu.

Additional information

Zhihao Zhu received his B.S. degree in automation and an M.S. degree in system engineering from Yanshan University, in 2007 and 2010, respectively. He received his Ph.D. degree in control science and engineering from Nanjing University of Science and Technology. In 2020, he joined the faculty of the School of Electrical Engineering, Yancheng Institute of Technology. His main research interests include spacecraft formation flying control, coordination control, robot control, multi-agent control and nonlinear control.

Zhi Gao received her Ph.D. degree in instrument science and technology from Yanshan University in 2014. She is currently a Lecturer with the College of Information Engineering at Yancheng Institute of Technology. Her main research interests include spacecraft formation flying control, multi-agent control and nonlinear control.

Yu Guo received her B.S. and M.S. degrees in automation, both from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, in 1984 and 1987, respectively. She received her Ph.D. degree in control science and engineering from Nanjing University of Science and Technology. In 1987, she joined the faculty of the School of Automation, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, and is currently a professor of automatic control there. Her major research interests are spacecraft attitude control, robot control, multi-object optimization for complicated systems and servo control system with high accuracy.

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Zhu, Z., Gao, Z. & Guo, Y. Distributed Global Velocity-free Attitude Coordination Control for Multiple Spacecraft without Unwinding. Int. J. Control Autom. Syst. 20, 411–420 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12555-020-0574-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12555-020-0574-7

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