Quaternion-based attitude synchronisation for multiple rigid bodies in the presence of actuator saturation

This paper concentrates on the quaternion-based attitude synchronisation problems of networked rigid bodies under fixed and undirected communication topology without relative angular measurements in the presence of actuator saturation. We first consider the leaderless attitude synchronisation problem with zero final angular velocity. In this case, we not only discuss the performance under the acyclic communication topology with the proposed bounded control algorithm, but also analyse that if there exist cycles in the topology, the proposed bounded algorithm guarantees that all equilibrium points are unstable except that the attitudes of networked rigid bodies achieve synchronisation. We also expand the result to the case of attitude tracking synchronisation with a static leader in the presence of actuator saturation. Next, the tracking synchronisation problem with the desired time-varying attitude is addressed in the presence of actuator saturation. Numerical examples are provided to validate the effectiveness of the proposed bounded schemes and illustrate the performances of multiple rigid bodies.     

Adaptive design for reference velocity recovery in motion coordination

We study a coordination problem where the objective is to steer a group of agents to a formation that translates with a prescribed reference velocity. Unlike existing designs which assume that the reference velocity information is available to each agent, we consider the situation where this information is available only to a leader. We then develop an adaptive design with which the other agents reconstruct the reference velocity and recover the desired formation. This design relies only on relative distance information with respect to neighbouring agents and, thus, can be implemented in a decentralized fashion.     

Attitude Control of Multiple Rigid Bodies with Uncertainties and Disturbances

Decentralized attitude synchronization and tracking control for multiple rigid bodies are investigated in this paper. In the presence of inertia uncertainties and environmental disturbances, we propose a class of decentralized adaptive sliding mode control laws. An adaptive control strategy is adopted to reject the uncertainties and disturbances. Using the Lyapunov approach and graph theory, it is shown that the control laws can guarantee a group of rigid bodies to track the desired time-varying attitude and angular velocity while maintaining attitude synchronization with other rigid bodies in the formation. Simulation examples are provided to illustrate the feasibility and advantage of the control algorithm.      

Bounded attitude control of rigid bodies: Real-time experimentation to a quadrotor mini-helicopter

A quaternion-based feedback is developed for the attitude stabilization of rigid bodies. The control design takes into account a priori input bounds and is based on nested saturation approach. It results in a very simple controller suitable for an embedded use with low computational resources available. The proposed method is generic not restricted to symmetric rigid bodies and does not require the knowledge of the inertia matrix of the body. The control law can be tuned to force closed-loop trajectories to enter in some a priori fixed neighborhood of the origin in a finite time and remain thereafter. The global stability is guaranteed in the case where angular velocity sensors have limited measurement range. The control law is experimentally applied to the attitude stabilization of a quadrotor mini-helicopter.     

Angular velocity observer for attitude tracking on SO(3) with the separation property

This paper studies a rigid body attitude tracking control problem with attitude measurements only, when angular velocity measurements are not available. An angular velocity observer is constructed such that the estimated angular velocity is guaranteed to converge to the true angular velocity asymptotically from almost all initial estimates. As it is developed directly on the special orthogonal group, which completely avoids singularities, complexities, or discontinuities caused by minimal attitude representations or quaternions. Then, the presented observer is integrated with a proportional-derivative attitude tracking controller to show a separation type property, where exponential stability is guaranteed for the combined observer and attitude control system.     

Distributed observer‐based leader‐follower attitude consensus control for multiple rigid bodies using rotation matrices

This paper addresses the distributed observer‐based leader‐follower attitude consensus control problem for multiple rigid bodies. An intrinsic distributed observer is proposed for each follower to estimate the leader's trajectory, which is only available to a subset of followers. The proposed observer can guarantee that the estimated attitude evolves on rotation matrices all the time, and it provides us with a simple way to design the attitude consensus control law. The dynamics of rigid bodies and distributed observer are both modeled directly on rotation matrices, so that the singularity and ambiguity can be avoided. Furthermore, adopting the idea of disturbance observer on vector space, a gyro bias observer on the rotation matrices is proposed. Based on the distributed observer, three types of attitude consensus control law are proposed, which are respectively on the basis of full‐state, biased angular velocity, and external disturbance combined with biased angular velocity. Finally, the SimMechanics experiments are provided to illustrate effectiveness of the proposed theoretical results.     

Output feedback control for attitude tracking

In this paper the problem of attitude tracking control for a rigid spacecraft is addressed. It is assumed that only attitude measurements are available, and thus spacecraft's angular velocity has to be properly estimated. Two alternative schemes are proposed in which the unit quaternion is adopted to represent the orientation. In the first scheme, a second-order model-based observer is adopted to estimate the angular velocity used in the control law. In the second scheme, an estimate of the angular velocity error is obtained through a lead filter. Sufficient conditions ensuring local exponential stability of the two controllers are derived via Lyapunov analysis.     

基于飞轮的欠驱动航天器姿态控制器设计

在以飞轮作为姿态控制执行机构的航天器中,如果部分飞轮发生故障而使得航天器欠驱动时,姿态控制性能会急剧下降.本文对两个匕轮的刚性航天器,研究了姿态控制问题.在零动量的假设下,利用Backstepping方法,为欠驱动姿态控制系统设计了一个新型的姿态控制器.设计过程分两步进行:首先,根据姿态运动学模型,设计出可使航天器姿态全局渐近稳定的控制角速率;然后,根据姿态动力学模型,得到使航天器姿态全局渐近稳定的控制力矩.该控制器为非连续控制器,可使航天器姿态误差全局一致渐近收敛为零,并使系统具有良好的动态性能.计算机仿真表明,本文所设计出的控制器是可行的.     

Distributed tracking of a non-minimally rigid formation for multi-agent systems

The objective of this paper is to design distributed control algorithms for a multi-agent system such that a rigid formation can be achieved asymptotically and the agents can finally move with a desired velocity. In particular, it is assumed that the formation is not necessarily minimally rigid, and the desired velocity is available to only a subset of the agents. Estimators are constructed for the agents to estimate the desired velocity, which are further used to design the control inputs of the agents. The proposed control algorithms consist of a formation acquisition term which depends on a potential function and the rigidity matrix, and a velocity estimation term. To deal with non-minimal rigidity, the centre manifold theorem is exploited to prove the stability of the resulting system. Simulation results are also provided to show the effectiveness of the proposed control algorithms.     

Adaptive motion coordination: Using relative velocity feedback to track a reference velocity

We study a coordination problem where the objective is to steer a group of agents to a formation that translates with a prescribed reference velocity. In Bai et al. [Bai, H., Arcak, M., & Wen, J. (2008). Adaptive design for reference velocity recovery in motion coordination. Systems and Control Letters, 57(8), 602-610.] we considered the situation where the reference velocity information is available only to a leader, and developed a decentralized adaptive design that uses relative position feedback. Although Bai et al. (please see above reference) guaranteed the desired formation, it did not ensure tracking of the reference velocity with the exception of special cases. We now propose a new adaptive redesign that guarantees tracking of the reference velocity by incorporating relative velocity feedback in addition to relative position feedback.     

Fault‐tolerant spacecraft attitude control under actuator saturation and without angular velocity

In this paper, a fault‐tolerant control scheme is proposed to control the attitude of a rigid spacecraft subject to external disturbances and multiple system uncertainties, as well as actuator faults and saturation. More challengingly, it is assumed that the angular velocity is unavailable. A super‐twisting observer with time‐varying gain is firstly designed to accurately estimate the angular velocity in finite time. The choice of the time‐varying gain is dependent on a state‐norm estimate. Then, using the information from the observer (estimate of angular velocity), a fault‐tolerant controller is proposed, where an adaptive law is introduced to address the unknown loss of effectiveness and neural networks are used to approximate the unknown nonlinear functions. It is proved that the attitude orientations converge to the desired values at a fixed time. Finally, a simulation example is utilized to verify the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.     

Relative attitude formation control of multi‐agent systems

This paper investigates the relative attitude formation control problem for a group of rigid‐body agents using relative attitude information on SO(3). On the basis of the gradient of a potential function, a family of distributed angular velocity control laws, which differ in the sense of a geodesic distance dependent function, is proposed. With directed and switching interaction topologies, the desired relative attitude formation is showed to be achieved asymptotically provided that the topology is jointly quasi‐strongly connected. Moreover, several sufficient conditions for the desired formation to be achieved exponentially and almost globally are given. Additionally, numerical examples are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed distributed control laws. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

基于四元数的航天器姿态非线性控制器

针对由四元数描述的航天器姿态控制系统进行了非线性反馈控制器设计.首先,得到一类含角速度测量的反馈控制律.该控制律不仅可以保证闭环系统是全局渐近稳定的,而且保证了2个期望的平衡位置都是稳定的.然后,利用基于四元数的滤波器取代角速度测量,得到一类无需角速度测量的反馈控制律.该控制律同样保证了闭环系统的全局渐近稳定性和2个稳定的期望平衡位置.值得注意的是,2个稳定的期望平衡位置,将促使由任意初始姿态出发的轨迹都就近收敛至任意期望平衡位置.最后,数值仿真展示了所得反馈控制律的优势.     

Distributed fixed‐time attitude coordination control for multiple rigid spacecraft

In this paper, the fixed‐time attitude coordination control for multiple rigid spacecraft under an undirected communication graph is investigated. By using the backstepping technique, the distributed fixed‐time observer, and the method of “adding a power integrator,” a distributed fixed‐time attitude coordination control law is designed for a group of spacecraft. The proposed control scheme is nonsingular and can guarantee a group of rigid spacecraft simultaneously tracking a common desired attitude within fixed time even when the time‐varying reference attitude is available only to a subset of the group members. Rigorous analysis is provided to show that the attitude consensus tracking errors can converge to the origin in finite time which is bounded by a fixed constant independent of initial conditions. Numerical simulations are carried out to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control law.     

Distributed event-triggered cooperative attitude control of multiple rigid bodies with leader–follower architecture

In this note, the distributed event-triggered cooperative attitude control of multiple rigid bodies with leader–follower architecture is investigated, where both the cases of static and dynamic leaders are all considered. Two distributed triggering procedures are first introduced for the followers and leaders, and then the distributed cooperative controllers are designed under the proposed triggering schemes. Under the designed controllers with the event-triggered strategies, it is shown that the orientations of followers converge to the convex hull formed by the desired leaders’ orientations with zero angular velocities. Moreover, the communication pressure in network is reduced and the energy of each agent is saved. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed method.     

Rigid body attitude tracking without angular velocity feedback

In this paper, we revisit the classical problem of attitude tracking for a rigid body. The interesting difference in the formulation is the assumption that only attitude measurements are available. We proceed to construct globally stabilizing control laws in terms of a minimal set of three-dimensional kinematic parameters that enable the rigid body to track any specified trajectory without requiring angular velocity measurements. The results presented here complement and extend some recent developments available for the nonminimal case of Euler parameters (quaternions).     

Decentralised finite-time attitude synchronisation and tracking control for rigid spacecraft

The problem of finite-time attitude synchronisation and tracking for a group of rigid spacecraft nonlinear dynamics is investigated in this paper. First of all, in the presence of environmental disturbance, a novel decentralised control law is proposed to ensure that the spacecraft attitude error dynamics can converge to the sliding surface in finite time; then the final practical finite-time stability of the attitude error dynamics can be guaranteed in small regions. Furthermore, a modified finite-time control law is proposed to address the control chattering. The control law can guarantee a group of spacecraft to attain desired time-varying attitude and angular velocity while maintaining attitude synchronisation with other spacecraft in the formation. Simulation examples are provided to illustrate the feasibility of the control algorithm presented in this paper.     

Output attitude tracking for flexible spacecraft

In this work a class of nonlinear controllers has been derived for spacecraft with flexible appendages. The control aim is to track a given desired attitude. First, a static controller based on the measure of the whole state is determined. Then, a dynamic controller is designed; this controller does not use measures from the modal variables, and the variables measured are the parameters describing the attitude and the spacecraft angular velocity. Finally, it is shown that a relaxed version of the tracking problem can be solved when the only measured variable is the spacecraft angular velocity. Simulations show the performances of such control schemes.     

Attitude Synchronization of a Group of Spacecraft Without Velocity Measurements

We consider the coordinated attitude control problem for a group of spacecraft, without velocity measurements. Our approach is based on the introduction of auxiliary dynamical systems (playing the role of velocity observers in a certain sense) to generate the individual and relative damping terms in the absence of the actual angular velocities and relative angular velocities. Our main focus, in this technical note, is to address the following two problems: 1) Design a velocity-free attitude tracking and synchronization control scheme, that allows the team members to align their attitudes and track a time-varying reference trajectory (simultaneously). 2) Design a velocity-free synchronization control scheme, in the case where no reference attitude is specified, and all spacecraft are required to reach a consensus by aligning their attitudes with the same final time-varying attitude. In this work, one important and novel feature (besides the non-requirement of the angular velocity measurements), consists in the fact that the control torques are naturally bounded and the designer can arbitrarily assign the desired bounds on the control torques, a priori, through the control gains, regardless of the angular velocities. Throughout this technical note, the communication flow between spacecraft is assumed to be undirected. Simulation results of a scenario of four spacecraft are provided to show the effectiveness of the proposed control schemes.      

Time-varying formation control with attitude synchronization of multiple rigid body systems

In this article, we study the leader-following formation control problem for a group of rigid body systems whose followers' motions are described by dual quaternion equations. A few features are as follows. First, we introduce an exosystem to generate the leader's trajectory as well as the formation configuration, which can produce a large class of time-varying signals so that we can achieve a variety of time-varying formations. Second, to overcome the communication constraint described by a digraph, we extend the distributed observer to estimate not only the desired attitude and angular velocity but also the leader's position and linear velocity. Third, a novel distributed control law is synthesized to furnish a rigorous performance analysis of the closed-loop system. The effectiveness of our design is illustrated by a numerical example.