Attitude Cooperative Control of Spacecraft Formation Via Output-Feedback

Attitude cooperative control of spacecraft
formation via output-feedback

Yueyong Lv, Qinglei Hu, Guangfu Ma and Jian Zhang
Department of Control Science and Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China
Abstract
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to propose a decentralized output feedback controller for cooperative attitude regulation of spacecraft
formation in absence of angular velocity feedback.
Design/methodology/approach The nonlinear relative attitude dynamic and kinematic equations represented by relative quaternion and relative
angular velocity, respectively, are considered in this paper. The lead lter is employed to synthesize virtual angular velocity signal so that the design of
output feedback controller is achieved. Lyapunov method is adopted to prove the stability of closed-loop system. Considering the external disturbance,
the theory of L2-gain disturbance attenuation is employed to improve the designed controller. Numerical simulations are carried out to verify the
controllers proposed.
Findings It is found that the closed-loop system can be guaranteed asymptotically stable in absence of external disturbance. When disturbance is
considered, as long as the sufcient condition proposed is satised, the improved controller can render system uniformly ultimately bounded stable.
Practical implications The proposed output feedback control scheme can be considered as a fall-back alternative for the case that the angular
velocity sensors fail, or seen as another option for the system without angular velocity sensors at all.
Originality/value Unlike most classical works in the eld of output feedback which focus on centralized scheme and neglect the disturbance, the
controller proposed in this paper is able to handle the output feedback control problem of multi-agent formation in a decentralized fashion, so as to
avoid the single failure point of a centralized scheme. Meanwhile, the capability of L2-gain disturbance attenuation is also achieved simultaneously.
Keywords Spacecraft, Controllers, Decentralized output feedback, Cooperative attitude control, Spacecraft formation ying, Attitude regulation,
L2-gain
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Spacecraft formation ying (SFF) has received extensive
interests in recent years (Bristow et al., 2000). By distributing
the functionality of a monolithic complex spacecraft between a
set of more than one smaller and closely ying spacecraft, the
performance of the whole system can be enhanced greatly.
Comparing with spacecraft constellation that is also based on
the distributing concept (Folta et al., 1998), any of the agent
spacecraft dynamic states are coupled together (Scharf et al.,
2004), while the dynamic states of spacecraft constellation are
mutually independent. In order to satisfy the requirement of
formation deployment so that the formation would work as a
virtual monolithic spacecraft, precise relative attitude control is
identied as another key issue as control of relative position.
Furthermore, when specied requirement is made such as
attitude coincident and alignment, it is of particular
signicance to promote the research on cooperative attitude
control of SFF.
To implement cooperative attitude control, there are three
main control architectures: Leader-Follower (L-F), behavioral
and virtual structure architectures. The L-F architecture is
the most studied in present literatures, in which the
cooperative attitude control of formation is reduced to an
attitude tracking problem for the follower spacecraft itself
(Wang and Hadaegh, 1996; Wang et al., 1999; Kristiansen,
2009; Bondhus, 2005). Although this reduction could bring
the existing attitude control algorithms for a single spacecraft
to SFF and make the stability analysis easy, the follower is a
single point of fault. Additionally, when the leader spacecraft
rotates too fast for the follower to track, the conguration of
the formation would be difcult to keep due to there is no
explicit feedback from the follower to the leader (Wang et al.,
1999). As an alternative to L-F architecture, the basic idea of
virtual structure architecture is to regard the formation as a
whole virtual space structure, and each formation agent is
controlled individually. Comparing with L-F architecture, the
desired state trajectory is generated by the virtual structure
not a specic spacecraft as in L-F. In Beard et al. (2001) and
Ahn and Kim (2008), the virtual structure scheme was
successfully applied in attitude synchronization. Generally
speaking, the two architectures mentioned above have both
fallen into the category of centralized control. So the problem
of fault sensitive and tracking capability in L-F architecture
still exists in the virtual structure. In order to handle this
problem, explicit feedback was introduced into the virtual
structure (Ren and Beard, 2004a, b), and a cooperative
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
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Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology: An International Journal
84/5 (2012) 321329
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited [ISSN 1748-8842]
[DOI 10.1108/00022661211255502]
This work was supported by the Scientic Research Foundation for
National Natural Science Foundation of China (Project Number:
61,004072, 61,174200), and Program for New Century Excellent
Talents in University (NCET-11-0801). The author fully appreciates the
nancial support. The author would also like to thank the reviewers and
the Editor for many suggestions that helped improve the paper.
321
control scheme with each spacecrafts information was
proposed. Nevertheless, each agent needs to run the
complex computation of virtual structure, and thus heavy
computation ability is required for the onboard computer. As
discussed in Balch and Arkin (1998) and Beard et al. (2001),
the behavioural architecture combines the outputs of multiple
controllers designed for different and possibly competing
behaviours together. Roughly speaking, it is a kind of complex
strategy. In Lawton et al. (2000), the behavioural architecture
is also used to maintain attitude alignment among a set of
spacecraft. An advantage of the behavioural architecture is
the explicit feedback is included, while it is hard to analyze
mathematically (Ren and Beard, 2004a, b). Indeed, all the
architectures stated previously fall into two opposite
categories: centralized and decentralized. Single point of
failure is an insoluble question for the centralized method,
which takes L-F architecture as typical representative.
Consequently, the centralized method is only suit for the
case that there are only few agents in the formation. Even
though some proposed method could work for a n-agent
formation and n could be arbitrarily large (Wong et al., 2002),
it can be converted to a set of two-body problem essentially.
While, it should be noted that all the literatures mentioned
above have utilized feedback of all states, i.e. full state
feedback control, which has naturally made an assumption
that each agent knows not only its own angular velocity but
also its neighbouring agents. However, such assumption
cannot be always satised due to either cost limitation or
implementation considerations. As a remedy to such
situation, output feedback control methods, or methods
without angular velocity, have been proposed by several
researchers (Kristiansen, 2009; Bondhus, 2005; Ren and
Beard, 2004a, b; Wong et al., 2002; Caccavale and Villani,
1999; Wei, 2007; Turner, 2009; Lawton and Beard, 2002; Wu
et al., 2010; Abdessameud and Tayebi, 2009). Caccavale and
Villani (1999) presented two alternative schemes for attitude
tracking of single spacecraft in the absence of angular velocity
feedback. One scheme is based on model-based observer,
while the other is based on a lead lter. Especially what
deserves to be mentioned is that the lead lter approach can
be seen as a classical method for solving the output feedback
problem, and we try to employ this lter in this work. In Wei
(2007), the proposed distributed attitude synchronization
approach has taken advantage of Modied Rodriguez
Parameters (MRP) for attitude representation, and it is not
suitable for the design of global control lawdue to singularity of
MRP. Obviously, a simple method to handle this problem is to
utilize another attitude representation in which there is no
singularity. Fortunately, quaternion (Turner, 2009) is such one
kind of attitude representation we need. Lawton and Beard
(2002) presented an attitude alignment law which requires a
bidirectional ring communication topology and relies on a
restrictive domain of attraction for convergence analysis. By
contrast, in Wu et al. (2010), the only assumption of the inter
communication topology is that the communication links are
bidirectional. Meanwhile, it is should be noted that all the above
literature about output feedback did not consider the affect of
external disturbance torque. However, in practical application,
the disturbance could not be neglected. For the disturbance
attenuation, the theory of L2 stability (Khalil, 2002) provides
a feasible approach.
Inspired by the analysis above, the main contribution of this
work lies in proposing a decentralized output control law for
cooperative attitude regulation of SFF. Since the attitude is
represented by means of quaternion, the design of global
control law has been brought into practice. Due to the
employment of lead lter, a pseudo velocity vector is produced
so that only the quaternion feedback signal is taken by the
controller, i.e. output feedback. Furthermore, when the
external disturbance is considered, the controller is improved
to convert the closed-loop system the capability of L2-gain
disturbance attenuation. The rest of this paper is organized as
follows. The next section states attitude and relative attitude
dynamics and kinematics of spacecraft together with basic
L2-gain disturbance attenuation theory. Followingly, control
laws and closed-loop system stability analysis are derived.
Then, numerical simulation and comparison to verify the
performance of the proposed controller are described. Finally,
the paper is completed with some concluding comments.
Mathematical model
Attitude dynamics and kinematics
For a n-agent (n $ 2) spacecraft formation, the dynamics of
the ith agent spacecraft in the formation is described by Euler
differential equation for the attitude rotation and is given by
Shuster (1993):
J
i
_ v
i
2Sv
i
J
i
v
i
u
i
d
i
; i 1; 2 1
where J
i
[ R
33
denotes the symmetric positive-denite inertia
matrix of the ith spacecraft, v
i
[ R
3
is the angular velocity,
and u
i
and d
i
are control and disturbance torque vector,
respectively. Accordingly, the kinematic equation using
quaternion q
i

h
i
1
T
i
T
is expressed as (Shuster, 1993),
where 1
i
is a three dimensional vector:
_ q
i

1
2
Tq
i
v
i

1
2
21
T
i
Eq
i
_
_
_
_
v
i
; i 1; 2 2
where the quaternion q
i
is dened with the constraint q
T
i
q
i
1,
and the quaternion operator E : R
4
!R
33
is dened as:
Eq
i
h
i
I
3
S1
i
3
Here, the matrix operator S( ) represents a skew-symmetric
matrix which is equivalent to the vector cross product operation
as follows:
Sab a b; ;a; b [ R
3
4
with the following property holds:
z
T
Saz 0; ;z 0 5
According to the denition, the following property of E( )
is easy to prove.
Property 1. For the quaternion operator dened in
equation (3), it holds the property as:
z
T
Eq
i
z h
i
z
T
z; ;z 0 6
Attitude cooperative control of spacecraft formation
Volume 84 Number 5 2012 321329
322
Here, a brief statement is shown as:
z
T
Eq
i
z 2h
i
z
T
z z
T
Eq
i
2h
i
I
3
z z
T
S1
i
z 0 7
Relative attitude of SFF
For the sake of controlling the total attitude motion of the
formation, relative quaternion and angular velocity are adopted
to represent the relative attitude. The direction cosine matrix
C( ) in the following development is regarded as a mapping
form a unit quaternion to a proper orthogonal matrix. In this
work, the inertia frame andthe body frame of anarbitrary pair of
formation agents (i.e. the ith and jth agents, i j) are employed
to denote the relative attitude representation associated with
C( ) as follows:
N
qi
!B
i
)
^
b
i
C
i
q
i
^ n; N
qj
!B
j
)
^
b
j
C
j
q
j
^ n
B
j
qij
!B
i
)
^
b
i
C
ij
^
b
j
where
^
b
i
and ^ n represent the unit-vector triads in the body frame
of the ith formation agent B
i
and the inertia frame N,
respectively. As C
i
q
i
represents the rotation from ^ n to
^
b
i
and
C
j
q
j
rotates ^ n to
^
b
j
, the combined rotation from
^
b
j
to
^
b
i
can be
represented as follows:
C
ij
C
i
q
i
C
T
j
q
j
8
whichleads tothe denitionof relative quaternionq
ij

h
ij
1
T
ij
T
as follows (Figure 1).
In the following, the relative quaternion is dened as:
q
ij
q
21
j
^q
i
9
where the operator ^ denotes the quaternion multiply
operation. Accordingly, the relative angular velocity is
dened as:
v
ij
v
i
2C
ij
v
j
10
And the relative attitude dynamics is given as (Shuster, 1993):
_ 1
ij

1
2
r
d
ij
Eq
ij
v
ij
11
Remark 1. The direction cosine matrix C
i
q
i
which
represents the rotation matrix from the ith body frame to
the inertia frame can be given specically as:
C
i
q
i
h
2
i
21
T
i
1
i
_ _
I
3
21
i
1
T
i
22h
i
S1
i
12
Obviously, the matrix C
i
q
i
is orthogonal, and so is C
ij
consequently.
L2-gain disturbance attenuation theory
For the controller synthesis, the following basic theory of L2-
gain disturbance attenuation is briey introduced. Consider
the following system:
_ x f x g
1
xu g
2
xd y hx 13
where x [ R
n
is state variable of system, u [ R
r
is control
variable, d [ R
s
is disturbance, and y [ R
m
is the predened
output performance signal. For any specied positive constant
g, the objective of the nonlinear L2-gain controller design is to
construct a feedback control algorithm u, so that for any
d [ L
2
0; T; ;T $ 0 the following inequality is satised:
Vxt 2Vx0 # g
2
_
T
0
d k k
2
dt 2
_
T
0
y k k
2
dt 14
where V(x) is the system storage function which need to be
constructed. When the foregoing inequality is satised, the
L2-gain from disturbance d to the predened output y is less
than or equal to g (Schaft, 2000).
Control problem
The control objective is to construct an appropriate controller
to make the spacecraft body coordinate frame be consistent
with the inertia frame. Meanwhile, the closed-system should
be guaranteed asymptotically stable or uniformly ultimately
bounded stable. In this work, we have taken the cooperative
attitude regulation of the whole formation for control objective,
which means that not only each agent is able to regulate its
attitude but also that the regulation process should cooperative
with other agents such that the whole formation could orient
simultaneously. In other words, the control objective of
cooperative attitude regulation in this work is to construct an
appropriate decentralized controller for each agent individually
so that they can regulate themselves cooperatively. At the same
time, the closed-system of the whole formation should be
asymptotically stable or uniformly ultimately bounded stable,
i.e. when t !1, q
i
!
1 0
13
T
; i 1; 2; . . .n, or when
t !1, the quaternion q
i
would converge into a small domain of
the origin.
Cooperative output feedback control law design
Design of cooperative output feedback controller based
on lead lter
In the conventional full state feedback controller design, both
the attitude quaternion and angular velocity were employed.
By contrast, the so-called output feedback approach in this
paper emphasizes only utilizing the feedback of quaternion
signals while neglecting the angular velocity. The basic idea of
the output feedback approach in this work is to employ a
linear lter called lead lter (Caccavale and Villani, 1999) to
Figure 1 Schematic diagram of coordinate conversion
b
j

=

C
j

(
q
j
)
n
b
i
=

C
i
(
q
i )
n
b
i
= C
ij
(q
i
, q
j
)b
j
b
j
= C
ji
(q
j
, q
i
)b
i
y
n
x
n
o
n
z
n
z
j
z
i
y
i
x
i
o
i
y
j
x
j
o
j
Earth
323
generate a pseudo angular velocity using quaternion, so that
the true velocity signals is not required any more.
For the ith agent, the vector u [ R
3
is dened as the output
of the following system:
_
z
i
2k
d
i
z
i
k
d
i
1
i
u
i
z
i
k
d
i
1
i
15
where k
d
i
is a positive scalar and 1
i
is the vector part of the
attitude quaternion of the ith agent.
In view of equation (15), the derivative of u
i
can be
obtained as:
_
u
i

_
z
i
k
d
i
_ 1
i
2k
d
i
u
i

1
2
k
d
i
Eq
i
v
i
16
Notice that the above system is a linear lter with transfer
matrix in the Laplace variable s:
Fs
us
1s

k
d
i
s
s k
d
i
I
3
17
Accordingly, we can give out the analogous lter equation of
the relative attitude:
_
z
ij
2r
d
ij
z
ij
r
d
ij
1
ij
_ _
u
ij
z
ij
r
d
ij
1
ij
18
where r
d
ij
is also a scalar which would work as a gain in
controller.
Using equation (11), the time derivative of u
ij
can be
written as:
_
u
ij

_
z
ij
r
d
ij
_ 1
ij
2r
d
ij
u
ij

1
2
r
d
ij
Eq
ij
v
ij
19
By employing the lead lter, the basic idea of the output
feedback approach in this work to generate a pseudo angular
velocity so that the feedback of true velocity signal is not
required any more.
For the ideal case, d
i
0, or in absence of the disturbance,
a cooperative attitude regulation controller for the ith agent of
the n-agent formation (the ith agent can be any one of the
formation) is given as:
u
i
2
uis :self regulation
k
p
i
1
i
2k
d
i
E
T
q
i
u
i
..
2
uic:cooperative regulation
n
j1; ji
r
p
ij
1
ij
r
d
ij
E
T
q
ij
u
ij
2 r
p
ji
C
T
ji
1
ji
r
d
ji
C
T
ji
E
T
q
ji
u
ji
_ _ _ _
..
20
where k
p
i
, k
d
i
, r
p
ij
, r
d
ij
, r
p
ji
and r
d
ji
are all positive scalar gains.
Note that here u
is
is used to denote the self-regulation terms
and u
ic
denotes the cooperative regulation term, and it is clear
that u
i
u
is
u
ic
.
Obviously, the controller (20) does not utilize any feedback
of angular velocity. Comparing with the conventional
proportion-differentiation (PD) type controller, there is no
differentiation term (i.e. angular velocity free) in the
controller. Instead, the terms in the form of E
T
q
~
u
~
consisting of quaternion and output of lead lter play the
roles of velocity feedback. Then the following statement can
be concluded.
Theorem 1. For a n-agent spacecraft formation with
dynamic and kinematic equations of each agent like equations
(1) and (2), if the control law is chosen as equation (20), then
the closed-loop system is asymptotically stable, i.e. the attitude
of each agent of the formation could regulate to zero
cooperatively.
Proof. First, consider the positive-denite Lyapunov
function candidate for each agent separately:
V
i

1
2
v
T
i
J
i
v
i
k
p
i
1 2h
i
2
1
T
i
1
i
_ _
u
T
i
u
i
21
The time derivative of V
i
along the trajectories of equations
(1), (2) and (16) is given by:
_
V
i
v
T
i
u
i
2Sv
i
J
i
v
i
k
p
i
1
T
i
v
i
2u
T
i
2k
d
i
u
i
1
2
k
d
i
Eq
i
v
i
_ _
v
T
i
u
i
k
p
i
1
i
_ _
22k
d
i
u
T
i
u
i
k
d
i
u
T
i
Eq
i
v
i
22k
d
i
u
T
i
u
i
2
_
Vic
n
j1;ji
r
p
ij
v
T
i
1
ij
r
d
ij
v
T
i
E
T
q
ij
u
ij
_ _
n
j1; ji
v
T
i
r
p
ji
C
T
ji
1
ji
r
d
ji
C
T
ji
E
T
q
ji
u
ji
_ _ _ _
..
22
Notice that the foregoing time derivative of Lyapunov
function candidate for each individual agent contains terms of
relative attitude, thus there must be some term on the relative
attitude in the nal Lyapunov function. Then, consider the
positive-denite Lyapunov function candidate for cooperative
relative attitude:
V
ijc
u
T
ij
u
ij
u
T
ji
u
ji
r
p
ij
1 2h
ij
2
1
T
ij
1
ij
_ _
r
p
ji
1 2h
ji
2
1
T
ji
1
ji
_ _ 23
The time derivative of V
c
along the trajectories of equations
(11) and (19) is given by:
_
V
ijc

d
dt
u
T
ij
u
ij
_ _
d
dt
u
T
ji
u
ji
_ _
d
dt
r
p
ij
1 2h
ij
2
1
T
ij
1
ij
_ _ _ _
d
dt
r
p
ji
1 2h
ji
2
1
T
ji
1
ji
_ _ _ _
22r
d
ij
u
T
ij
u
ij
r
d
ij
u
T
ij
Eq
ij
v
ij
22r
d
ji
u
T
ji
u
ji
r
d
ji
u
T
ji
Eq
ji
v
ji
r
p
ij
1
T
ij
v
ij
r
p
ji
1
T
ji
v
ji
22r
d
ij
u
T
ij
u
ij
22r
d
ji
u
T
ji
u
ji
r
d
ij
u
T
ij
Eq
ij
v
i
r
d
ji
u
T
ji
Eq
ji
v
j
r
p
ij
1
T
ij
v
i
r
p
ji
1
T
ji
v
j
2r
p
ij
1
T
ij
C
ij
v
j
2r
p
ji
1
T
ji
C
ji
v
i
2r
d
ij
u
T
ij
Eq
ij
C
ij
v
j
2r
d
ji
u
T
ji
Eq
ji
C
ji
v
i
24
So far, we can combine the cooperative Lyapunov function V
c
and all the separate self-regulation Lyapunov function V
i
together. The total Lyapunov function candidate for the whole
closed-loop system is selected as:
V
n
i1
V
i

n
i1
n
j1; ji
V
ijc
25
324
And its time derivative can be given by:
_
V
n
i1
_
V
i

n
i1
n
j1; ji
_
V
ijc
22
n
i1
k
d
i
u
T
i
u
i
_ _
22
n
i1
n
j1; ji
r
d
ij
u
T
ij
u
ij
r
d
ji
u
T
ji
u
ji
_ _
2
n
i1
n
j1; ji
_
v
T
i
r
p
ij
1
ij
r
d
ij
E
T
q
ij
u
ij
_ _
2v
T
i
r
p
ji
C
T
ji
1
ji
_
:
r
d
ji
C
T
ji
E
T
q
ji
u
ji
v
T
j
r
p
ji
1
ji
r
d
ji
E
T
q
ji
u
ji
_ _
2v
T
j
r
p
ij
C
T
ij
1
ij
r
d
ij
C
T
ij
E
T
q
ij
u
ij
_ __
n
i1
n
j1; ji
_
r
d
ij
u
T
ij
Eq
ij
v
i
r
d
ji
u
T
ji
Eq
ji
v
j
r
p
ij
1
T
ij
v
i
r
p
ji
1
T
ji
v
j
2r
p
ij
1
T
ij
C
ij
v
j
2r
p
ji
1
T
ji
C
ji
v
i
2r
d
ij
u
T
ij
Eq
ij
C
ij
v
j
2r
d
ji
u
T
ji
Eq
ji
C
ji
v
i
_
22
n
i1
k
d
i
u
T
i
u
i
_ _
22
n
i1
n
j1; ji
r
d
ij
u
T
ij
u
ij
r
d
ji
u
T
ji
u
ji
_ _
# 0
26
So far, Theorem 1 has been proved.
Design of L2-gain disturbance attenuation cooperative
output feedback controller
Although it is foreseeable from the proving process of
Theorem 1 that the controller in equation (20) could ensure a
satisfactory closed-loop behavior, it is should be noted that
the disturbance has been neglected. Coincidently, the
disturbance attenuation problem was also neglected in some
other representative works. In this section, a modication on
the proposed controller equation (20) is given so that the new
controller could endow the closed-loop system L2-gain
disturbance attenuation (Khalil, 2002).
For the sake of further derivation, the output performance is
dened as y u
T
1
; u
T
n
. . .u
T
n

T
, and the total disturbance vector
of the system is dened as d d
T
1
; d
T
2
. . .d
T
n

T
. The control
objective is to ensure the L2-gain from disturbance to output
is less than or equal to g. Then the new controller after
modication is given by:
u
i
2k
p
i
1
i
2k
d
i
E
T
q
i
u
i
2k
l
i
_
u
i
2 r
p
ij
1
ij
r
d
ij
E
T
q
ij
u
ij
_ _
r
p
ji
C
T
ji
1
ji
r
d
ji
C
T
ji
E
T
q
ji
u
ji
_ _
27
Under this new control law, the following conclusion holds.
Theorem 2. For a n-agent spacecraft formation with
dynamic and kinematic equations of each agent like equations
(1) and (2), if the control lawis chosen as equation (27), and for
any g . 0, the following criteria is satised:
2k
d
i
21 $ 0
2k
d
i
21
_ _
1
2
k
l
i
k
d
i
h
i
2
1
4g
2
_ _
2
k
l
i
k
d
i

2
4
$ 0;
_
_
i 1; 2; n
28
then the closed-loop system is uniformly ultimately bounded,
and the L2-gain from disturbance d to output performance y is
less than or equal to g.
Proof. First, we also consider equation (21) as the positive-
denite Lyapunov function candidate for each agent separately.
Under the application of the new controller in equation (27),
the derivative of equation (21) is given as:
_
V
i
22k
d
i
u
T
i
u
i
2
n
j1; ji
r
p
ij
v
T
i
1
ij
r
d
ij
v
T
i
E
T
q
ij
u
ij
_ _
n
j1;ji
v
T
i
r
p
ji
C
T
ji
1
ji
r
d
ji
C
T
ji
E
T
q
ji
u
ji
_ _ _ _
v
T
i
d
i
2k
l
i
v
T
i
_
u
i
29
Comparing with equation (22), the new term v
T
i
d
i
2k
l
i
v
T
i
_
u
i
is
added in equation (29). By contrast, there is no change in the
cooperative Lyapunov function candidate V
ijc
and its derivative
_
V
ijc
. Then, the total Lyapunov function candidate can be also
selected as the combination of all the V
ijc
and V
i
. Thus, it has the
same form as equation (25). A
After some algebraic operation, the derivation of the total
Lyapunov function can be obtained as:
_
V
n
i1
22k
d
i
u
T
i
u
i
v
T
i
d
i
2k
l
i
v
T
i
_
u
i
_ _
22
n
i1
n
j1;ji
r
d
ij
u
T
ij
u
ij
r
d
ji
u
T
ji
u
ji
_ _
30
We dene an auxiliary function as follows:
H
_
V kyk
2
2g
2
kdk
2
31
Substituting equation (30) into equation (31), we can obtain:
H
_
V kyk
2
2g
2
kdk
2
n
i1
22k
d
i
u
T
i
u
i
v
T
i
d
i
2k
l
i
v
T
i
_
u
i
_ _
22
n
i1
n
j1;ji
r
d
ij
u
T
ij
u
ij
r
d
ji
u
T
ji
u
ji
_ _
n
i1
u
T
i
u
i
_ _
2g
2
n
i1
d
T
i
d
i
_ _
n
i1
Hi
2k
d
i
21
_ _
u
T
i
u
i
v
T
i
d
i
2k
l
i
v
T
i
_
u
i
2g
2
d
T
i
d
i
..
_
_
_
_
_
_
22
n
i1
n
j1;ji
r
d
ij
u
T
ij
u
ij
r
d
ji
u
T
ji
u
ji
_ _
32
Dene H
i
22k
d
i
21u
T
i
u
i
v
T
i
d
i
2k
l
i
v
T
i
_
u
i
2g
2
d
T
i
d
i
and
substitute equation (16) into it, then we have:
325
H
i
2 2k
d
i
21
_ _
u
T
i
u
i
v
T
i
d
i
k
l
i
k
d
i
v
T
i
u
i
2
1
2
Eq
i
v
i
_ _
2g
2
d
T
i
d
i
2 2k
d
i
21
_ _
u
T
i
u
i
v
T
i
d
i
k
l
i
k
d
i
v
T
i
u
i
2
1
2
k
l
i
k
d
i
v
T
i
Eq
i
v
i
2g
2
d
T
i
d
i
33
In view of Property 1, H
i
can be further written as:
H
i
2 2k
d
i
21
_ _
u
T
i
u
i
v
T
i
d
i
k
l
i
k
d
i
v
T
i
u
i
2
1
2
k
l
i
k
d
i
h
i
v
T
i
v
i
2g
2
d
T
i
d
i
# 2 2k
d
i
21
_ _
u
T
i
u
i
k
l
i
k
d
i
v
T
i
u
i
2
1
2
k
l
i
k
d
i
h
i
2
1
4g
2
_ _
v
T
i
v
i
2
1
4g
2
v
T
i
v
i
kv
i
k kd
i
k 2g
2
d
T
i
d
i
2
1
2g
kv
i
k 22g kd
i
k
_ _
2
2
u
T
i
v
T
i
_ _
2k
d
i
21
_ _
2
k
l
i
k
d
i
2
2
k
l
i
k
d
i
2
1
2
k
l
i
k
d
i
h
i
2
1
4g
2
_ _
_
_
_
_
u
i
v
i
_
_
_
_
34
According to the assumption of Theorem 2, i.e. equation
(28), H
i
is negative denite, and so is H consequently. So far,
the theorem is proved.
Remark 1. Fromthe foregoing proving process of Theorem
2, we can see that the L2-gain disturbance attenuation problem
has fallen into the category of disturbance attenuation of single
spacecraft. And there is no relation with the relative attitude
at all, because the disturbance torque acts on each spacecraft
independently.
Remark 2. In the criteria equation (28), there is explicit
relation between the control gains k
d
i
; k
l
i
and the L2-gain g.
The smaller g is selected, the better the disturbance
attenuation effect and control accuracy are. Nevertheless, k
d
i
and k
l
i
need to be large enough so as to satisfy the criteria of
Theorem 2, and then the control torque may be too large as
a result. Thus, it is necessary to select a set of control
parameters properly so as to balance the control torque and
control accuracy.
Simulation result and comparison
To study the effectiveness and performance of the proposed
cooperative strategies, the detailed response is numerically
simulated using the set of governing equations (equations (1)
and (2)) in conjunction with the proposed control laws
(equations (20) and (27)), respectively. The numerical
simulation is carried out using Matlab 6.5/Simulink.
A scenario with three spacecrafts is considered, where the
three spacecrafts share the same values of inertia momentum
(Hu, 2010):
J
i

22:7 0:2 20:5
0:2 23:3 0:3
20:5 0:3 24:5
_
_
_
_
kg m
2
; i 1; 2; 3 35
The initial angular velocity of each agent is set to:
v
1
0
1:89 21:32 2:29
_
T
deg=s;
v
2
0
2:41 1:26 21:78
_
T
deg=s;
v
3
0
22:06 1:62 2:35
_
T
deg=s;
while the initial attitude quaternion is set to:
q
1
0
0 2
3
p
=3
3
p
=3
3
p
=3
_ _
T
;
q
2
0
0:5 0:1 20:5 0:7
_
T
;
q
3
0
0:707 0:3 0:4 20:5
_
T
;
According to the criteria equation (28), the control gains have
been adjusted via a trial-and-error procedure so as to confer
an acceptable transient response to the closed-loop system.
The resulting gains are set to:
k
p
1
0:2; k
d
1
0:75; r
p
12
r
p
13
0:3; r
d
12
r
d
13
1;
k
p
2
0:4; k
d
2
1; r
p
21
r
p
23
0:4; r
d
21
r
d
23
0:9;
k
p
3
0:3; k
d
3
0:5; r
p
31
r
p
32
0:3; r
d
31
r
d
32
0:5;
k
l
1
k
l
2
k
l
3
3
In addition, the periodic disturbance torque simulated is of
the following form Hu (2010):
dt
3 cos t 210 4 sin0:3t
21:5 sin0:2t 3cos0:5t 15
3 sin t 10 8sin0:4t
_
_
_
_
T
10
24
N m
36
as shown in Figure 2 (Figures 3 and 4).
Next, the control torque calculated by different controller
proposed is compared. Figures 5 and 6 show the time response
of control torque of each agent, in absence and presence of
external disturbance, respectively. The advantage of using the
proposed controller (equation (20)) is obvious in the control
torque plots as shown in Figure 5. Although the amplitude of
control torque is related to different initial attitude error, it can
converge to zero in a short and steady transient process. What is
more, by selecting appropriate control gains, the amplitude of
control torque ineachaxis has beenkept less than1 N m, which
indicates a good application perspective in practical terms.
When external disturbance is considered, the control torque
computed by the improved controller (equation (27)) is also
acceptable as shown in Figure 6. It seems as if there is no
difference between Figures 5 and 6, however, there is slight
shakes due to the existence of external disturbance. Because the
amplitude of disturbance is much smaller relative to active
control torque, the shake is very slight. On the other hand, it
means that the controller proposed could response to the
impact brought by external disturbance and attenuate it well.
326
Figures 7-9 give out time response of relative attitude
quaternion between different agent, and each relative
quaternion converse to unit-quaternion in the end. This
suggests that each agent has the same attitude orientation, in
other words, they regulate themselves cooperatively together.
And the control object can be achieved. Summarizing all the
simulations above, it not only validates the feasibility of the
controllers proposed, but also shows the reference value in
practical engineering.
Conclusion
In this paper, a decentralized output feedback control scheme
for cooperative attitude regulation of SFF is presented. For a
n-agent spacecraft formation in which all the agents are the
same, an output feedback scheme based control law is
proposed by employing lead lter such that the angular
velocity is replaced with the ltered output. And the closed-
loop system has been proved to be asymptotically stable
theoretically using Lyapunov stability. Considering that few
Figure 2 External disturbance torque
Figure 3 Attitude quaternion (without disturbance)
Figure 4 Attitude quaternion (with disturbance)
Figure 5 Control torque (without disturbance)
327
literatures have taken account of the effect of external
disturbance, we made further studying on this problem in
presence of external disturbance then. The previous controller
that only applies to spacecraft without disturbance is then
improved by adding a L2-gain control term, such that the
closed-loop system has obtained the L2-gain disturbance
attenuation capability. Uniformly ultimately bounded stability
for the closed-loop system is also proved in theory, and the
L2-gain from disturbance to predened output is less than g.
In the end, a scenario with three-agent formation was
performed in numerical simulation. The robustness,
effectiveness and practical perspective of the proposed
controllers are clearly revealed in simulation results.
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Corresponding author
Qinglei Hu can be contacted at: huqinglei@hit.edu.cn
329
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