Distributed Fixed-Time Coordinated Attitude Tracking Control with a Dynamic Leader for Spacecraft Formation Flying System

Abstract

This paper studies the problem of distributed coordinated attitude tracking control with a dynamic leader for spacecraft formation systems in the presence of parameter uncertainties and external disturbances. Under the constraint that the time-varying attitude trajectory of the leader is only available for a subset of the followers, a fixed-time distributed estimator for each follower is proposed. Moreover, a fixed-time distributed attitude tracking control law combined with a fixed-time distributed estimator and distributed adaptive control algorithm is proposed. This control law is dedicated to reducing the effects of system uncertainty and external bounded disturbances, and the settling time of this algorithm is independent of the initial state of the system. The fixed-time stability of the spacecraft formation system is proven with the Lyapunov-based approach, and numerical simulations clearly verify the effectiveness of the proposed control algorithm.