A proportional-derivative-type attitude tracking control of satellite

This paper addresses a difficult problem of designing a control approach with simple structure to perform attitude tracking maneuver for rigid satellites. The satellite is subject to disturbance torques and uncertain inertia parameters. An observer-based estimation law is firstly proposed to reconstruct the uncertain dynamics. It is shown that such estimation can be achieved with zero estimation error and within finite time. A proportional-derivative (PD)-type controller including a classical PD control effort and a compensation control part is then presented. The compensation control is designed based on the estimated information, and applied to completely reject the uncertain dynamics. The closed-loop attitude tracking system is guaranteed to be asymptotically stable. Moreover, the control performance can be achieved by tuning control gains in the theoretical framework of classic PD control theory. Simulation results are presented to verify the performance of the proposed approach.