Adaptive-Gain Second-Order Sliding Mode Control of Attitude Tracking of Flexible Spacecraft

Abstract

This paper investigates the robust finite-time control problem for flexible spacecraft attitude tracking maneuver in the presence of model uncertainties and external disturbances. Two robust attitude tracking controllers based on finite-time second-order sliding mode control algorithms are presented to solve this problem. For the first controller, a novel second-order sliding mode control scheme is developed to achieve high-precision tracking performance. For the second control law, an adaptive-gain second-order sliding mode control algorithm combing an adaptive law with second-order sliding mode control strategy is designed to relax the requirement of prior knowledge of the bound of the system uncertainties. The rigorous proofs show that the proposed controllers provide finite-time convergence of the attitude and angular velocity tracking errors. Numerical simulations on attitude tracking control are presented to demonstrate the performance of the developed controllers.