Stabilization and Tracking of Underactuated
Axisymmetric Spacecraft with Bounded Control
We provide stabilizing feedback control laws for the kinematic system of an
underactuated axisymmetric spacecraft subject to input constraints.
The proposed control law forces all closed-loop trajectories in a region of
the state space where the control inputs are small and bounded.
This control law is subsequently extended to solve the case of attitude tracking of an
underactuated spacecraft using two controls.
As a special case we also provide a feedback control to track a specified direction
in inertial space.
All proposed control laws achieve asymptotic stability with
exponential convergence.
One of the novelties of the proposed control design is the use of a new, non-standard
description of the attitude motion, which allows the decomposition of the general motion
into two rotations.
This attitude description is especially useful for analyzing axisymmetric
bodies, where the motion of the symmetry axis maybe of prime importance.
Full paper postscript version (283K).
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