Reentry attitude tracking via coupling effect-triggered control subjected to bounded uncertainties

The attitude tracking control issue for hypersonic reentry vehicle subjected to bounded uncertainties is investigated in this paper. The uncertainties are estimated by a disturbance observer with a simple structure whose parameter tuning methodology is provided to guarantee the system robustness. The coupling effect of the hypersonic reentry vehicle is analysed with a binary form based on a coupling effect indicator. The positive or negative value of indicator represents the harmful or beneficial coupling effect on the system. Then, a coupling effect-triggered control is developed to cancel the harmful couplings while utilising the beneficial couplings. The trigger point in the controller occurs when the property of the coupling effect happens to change. The specific criterion is introduced to quantify the performance improvement via the proposed scheme. Application to the hypersonic reentry tracking is presented to demonstrate the validity of the proposed method.