SMC for Attitude Tracking of Rigid Spacecraft with Disturbances

Abstract

The attitude control problem for a rigid spacecraft with highly nonlinear characteristics in three dimensions has already been extensively studied (see, e.g., [298, 130, 239, 290, 283, 196, 140] and references therein). From a practical point of view, the design of efficient and low-cost attitude controllers is an important issue for aerospace industry. Indeed, a large variety of nonlinear control schemes, using the quaternion and angular velocity in the feedback, have been proposed recently. For instance, in [261], the attitude tracking control problem for an uncertain rigid spacecraft without angular velocity measurements is addressed.