Adaptive Angular Velocity Tracking Control of Spacecraft with Dynamic Uncertainties

The tracking of orientation and angular velocity is a primary attitude control task for an on-orbit spacecraft.The problem for a rigid spacecraft tracking a desired angular velocity profile is addressed using an adaptive feedback control.An angular velocity feedback tracking algorithm is firstly developed based on the precisely known attitude dynamics of the spacecraft,and the global tracking of the control algorithm is proved based on the Lyapunov analysis.An adaptation mechanism is then designed to deal with the dynamic uncertainties of the spacecraft.Such an adaptation mechanism enables the controller to track any desired angular velocity trajectories even in the presence of uncertain inertia parameters,although it does not guarantee the inertia tensor being precisely identified.To verify the effectiveness of the proposed adaptive control policy,computer simulations on dynamic equations of a spacecraft are conducted and their results are discussed.