Spacecraft attitude determination and control: Quaternion based method

In this review, we discuss in detail the quaternion based methods for spacecraft attitude determination and control. We summarize some recent developments on this research area. We start with some brief but complete discussions on the theory of quaternion which will be sufficient for the discussion in the remaining part of the review. We review the progress of quaternion based attitude determination which has been well recognized and achieved great success by using Newton’s method. We also present a different and more elegant treatment on an analytic solution to Wahba’s problem. For quaternion based control system design, we focus on some recently developed reduced quaternion models which use only vector component of the quaternion in the state space models. We discuss some new design method that has the following features: (a) it has an analytic solution of LQR, and (b) the designed system reduces disturbance effect, global stabilizes the nonlinear spacecraft system, and is robust to the modeling uncertainty. The presentation of the review is self-complete. It includes all the background information that is needed to understand the development involving the system modeling, the attitude determination, and the attitude control system design methods.