Adaptive super-twisting sliding mode attitude coordination control for spacecraft formation flying with actuator saturation

This paper investigates the attitude coordination control issue for spacecraft formation flying in the presence of actuator saturation and external disturbances with unknown boundaries. Firstly, a super-twisting integral terminal sliding mode surface is developed, which ensures that the sliding mode surface and its first-time derivative converge to zero in finite time. Then, based on the developed sliding mode surface and adaptive technique, a robust anti-saturation distributed attitude coordination controller that enables the attitude and angular velocity to precisely track the desired time-varying command in finite time is devised under the undirected communication topology. Finally, stability analysis and numerical simulations validate the effectiveness and feasibility of the devised control approach.