Distributed Finite-Time Attitude Tracking Control for Multiple Rigid Spacecrafts with Full-State Constraints

Abstract

This paper studies the distributed attitude tracking control problem for rigid spacecraft under a directed graph with external disturbances and full-state constraints. First, because only a subset of the follower spacecraft can acquire the states of the leader spacecraft, a distributed finite-time observer was used to estimate the leader spacecraft’s attitude and angular velocity accurately. Then a nonhomogeneous disturbances observer (NDO) was employed to estimate and compensate for external disturbances. Next, based on the barrier Lyapunov functions (BLFs), a distributed finite-time command-filtered backstepping controller was designed to make the tracking error converge to a small neighborhood of the origin in finite time. The BLFs were used to ensure the full-state constraints and the compensating signals were designed to eliminate the influence of the command filter errors. Furthermore, stability of the closed-loop system was analyzed based on the finite-time Lyapunov stability theory. Numerical simulations were conducted to validate the effectiveness of the proposed control law.