Robust decentralized attitude coordination control of spacecraft formation

The attitude coordination control problem for multiple spacecraft is investigated in this paper. A simple decentralized variable structure coordinated controller is proposed using Lyapunov’s direct method. In the presence of model uncertainties, external disturbances and time-varying delays in the intercommunication, the presented controller can render a spacecraft formation consistent to a prespecified orientation in the globally-convergent sense. By virtue of a corollary of Barbalat’s Lemma, the convergence of the proposed controller for the resulting closed-loop system is proved theoretically. Numerical simulations are also included to demonstrate the performance of the developed controller.