A simple saturated control framework for spacecraft with bounded disturbances

A simple control framework is proposed for the saturated attitude control of spacecraft subject to bounded disturbances. The framework is composed of three parts, that is, the quaternion part, the saturated angular velocity part, and the bounded anti-disturbance part. The anti-disturbance part can be different depending on the forms of disturbances. Based on a useful lemma, it can be proven that the saturation restriction on the angular velocity part can be removed in finite time, allowing us to analyze the closed-loop stability by means of the Lyapunov theory. Two different saturated controllers are presented to exemplify the applications of the control framework. Finally, simulations are conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed controllers. Copyright (C) 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.