Abstract:

The coordinated attitude control of multiple spacecraft is concerned in this paper and a sliding mode control method, on special orthogonal group (SO(3)) is proposed. Combined with the directed communication topology, the attitude model on SO(3) for multiple spacecraft is established. Then, the relative errors between the spacecraft on SO(3) are formed, and the coordinated commands are given to formulate the SO(3) controllers. To handle the singularity in attitude system, a compensatory term related to the attitude on SO(3) is introduced to construct the sliding surface. Furthermore, by using the backstepping method the sliding mode controllers are providied with the stability analysis. The proposed backstepping sliding mode control strategy guarantees the controllers to be functional in the entire domain of the attitude, and then the multiple spacecraft can reach stable attitude consensus. Two simulations are conducted to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Key words: Multiple spacecraft, Coordinated control, Backstepping sliding mode method, SO(3)