Adaptive fuzzy fault-tolerant attitude control of spacecraft

This paper investigates the attitude control of spacecraft in the presence of unknown mass moment of inertia matrix, external disturbances, actuator failures, and control input constraints. A robust adaptive controller is proposed with the utilization of fuzzy logic and backstepping techniques. The unit quaternion is employed to describe the attitude of spacecraft for global representation without singularities. The system uncertainty is estimated by introducing a fuzzy logic system. The adaptive mechanism has only two parameters to be adapted on-line because the adaptive law of the proposed controller is derived from the norm of the weight matrix. The stability of the closed-loop system is guaranteed by Lyapunov direct approach. Results of numerical simulations state that the proposed controller is successful in achieving high attitude performance in the presence of parametric uncertainties, external disturbances, actuator failures, and control input constraints.

Research highlights►Robust adaptive controller using fuzzy logic and backsteping techniques; ►Robust against parametric uncertainties and external disturbances; ►Able to accommodate actuator failures under control input constraints; ►Achieve high attitude performance under control input faults and constraints