Research ArticleRobust fault-tolerant tracking control design for spacecraft under control input saturation

- The proposed controller has fast and accurate response in the presence of bounded disturbances.
- The proposed controller is robust to the partial loss of actuator effectiveness.
- The proposed controller does not require knowledge of the actuator faults.
- The proposed controller has explicit consideration of control input saturation.
- The proposed controller is robust to uncertainty in inertial matrix.

In this paper, a continuous globally stable tracking control algorithm is proposed for a spacecraft in the presence of unknown actuator failure, control input saturation, uncertainty in inertial matrix and external disturbances. The design method is based on variable structure control and has the following properties: (1) fast and accurate response in the presence of bounded disturbances; (2) robust to the partial loss of actuator effectiveness; (3) explicit consideration of control input saturation; and (4) robust to uncertainty in inertial matrix. In contrast to traditional fault-tolerant control methods, the proposed controller does not require knowledge of the actuator faults and is implemented without explicit fault detection and isolation processes. In the proposed controller a single parameter is adjusted dynamically in such a way that it is possible to prove that both attitude and angular velocity errors will tend to zero asymptotically. The stability proof is based on a Lyapunov analysis and the properties of the singularity free quaternion representation of spacecraft dynamics. Results of numerical simulations state that the proposed controller is successful in achieving high attitude performance in the presence of external disturbances, actuator failures, and control input saturation.