Leader‐following attitude consensus of multiple uncertain spacecraft systems subject to external disturbance

The attitude consensus problem of multiple rigid spacecraft systems is one of the key issues in spacecraft formation flying and has been extensively studied. In this paper, we further consider the leader‐following attitude consensus problem of multiple rigid uncertain spacecraft systems subject to a class of multi‐tone sinusoidal disturbances with arbitrarily unknown amplitudes, initial phases, frequencies, and constant biases. In contrast to the existing results, in order to achieve asymptotic reference tracking and disturbance rejection by smooth control, we have integrated the distributed observer approach with internal model and adaptive control techniques. Simulation results are shown to validate the effectiveness of the proposed control law. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.