We derive a continuous nonlinear control law for spacecraft attitude tracking of arbitrary continuously differentiable attitude trajectories based on rotation matrices. This formulation provides almost global stabilizability, that is, Lyapunov stability of the desired equilibrium of the error system as well as convergence from all initial states except for a subset for which the complement is open and dense. This controller thus overcomes the unwinding phenomenon associated with continuous controllers based on attitude representations, such as quaternions, that are not bijective and without resorting to discontinuous switching. The controller requires no inertia information, no information on constant-disturbance torques, and only frequency information for sinusoidal disturbance torques. For slew maneuvers (that is, maneuvers with a setpoint command in the absence of disturbances), the controller specializes to a continuous, nonlinear, proportional-derivative-type, almost globally stabilizing controller, in which case the torque inputs can be arbitrarily bounded a priori. For arbitrary maneuvers, we present an approximate saturation technique for bounding the control torques.

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A deterministic attitude estimation problem for a rigid body in a potential field, with bounded attitude and angular velocity measurement errors is considered. An attitude estimation algorithm that globally minimizes the attitude estimation error is obtained. Assuming that the initial attitude, the initial angular velocity and measurement noise lie within given ellipsoidal bounds, an uncertainty ellipsoid that bounds the attitude and the angular velocity of the rigid body is obtained. The center of the uncertainty ellipsoid provides point estimates, and the size of the uncertainty ellipsoid measures the accuracy of the estimates. The point estimates and the uncertainty ellipsoids are propagated using a Lie group variational integrator and its linearization, respectively. The attitude and angular velocity estimates are optimal in the sense that the sizes of the uncertainty ellipsoids are minimized.

This paper presents a tracking control scheme for spacecraft formation flying with a decentralized collision avoidance scheme, using a virtual leader state trajectory. The configuration space for a spacecraft is the Lie group SE (3), which is the set of positions and orientations in three-dimensional Euclidean space. A virtual leader trajectory, in the form of attitude and orbital motion of a virtual satellite, is generated offline. Each spacecraft tracks a desired relative configuration with respect to the virtual leader in an autonomous manner, to achieve the desired formation. The relative configuration between a spacecraft and the virtual leader is described in terms of exponential coordinates on SE(3). A continuous-time feedback tracking control scheme is designed using these exponential coordinates and the relative velocities. A Lyapunov analysis guarantees that the spacecraft asymptotically

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In this paper, we treat the practical problem of tracking the attitude and angular velocity of a spacecraft in the presence of gravity and disturbance moments. Autonomous trajectory tracking is a practical problem for robotic spacecraft, as well as autonomous aerial and ground vehicles. The approach used here achieves near global stable trajectory tracking by using a globally defined dynamics model that includes a moment on the vehicle created by a gravity potential and a disturbance moment that vanishes when the required angular velocity to be tracked is zero. The feedback control law is also globally defined. In the presence of the particular type of disturbance moments considered, this control law achieves almost global asymptotic tracking. Lyapunov methods are used to analyze the properties of the closed loop system and show near global stability and asymptotic convergence to the desired attitude and angular velocity trajectory. The treatment in this paper utilizes concepts from geometric mechanics to treat the dynamics of the feedback system in a global manner.

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Abstract. In this paper we study a discrete variational optimal control problem for the rigid body. The cost to be minimized is the external torque applied to move the rigid body from an initial condition to a pre-specified terminal condition. Instead of discretizing the equations of motion, we use the discrete equations obtained from the discrete Lagrange-d'Alembert principle, a process that better approximates the equations of motion. Within the discrete-time setting, these two approaches are not equivalent in general. The kinematics are discretized using a natural Lie-algebraic formulation that guarantees that the flow remains on the Lie group SO(3) and its algebra so(3). We use Lagrange's method for constrained problems in the calculus of variations to derive the discrete-time necessary conditions. We give a numerical example for a three-dimensional rigid body maneuver.