Feedback attitude control of spacecraft using two single gimbal control moment gyros

Abstract

In this paper, feedback attitude control of an underactuated spacecraft with two single gimbal control moment gyros (SGCMGs) is considered. For a two-SGCMG system in an arbitrary configuration, a feedback control method based on a real-time optimization approach is proposed. Here, the gimbal angle trajectories as the solution to the minimum-time control are parameterized by the time polynomials, and their coefficients are modified at each sampling period. Numerical simulations are performed to demonstrate the validity of the proposed method as well as a certain robustness against unmodeled dynamics. Furthermore, the experimental verification is also conducted to demonstrate the actual effectiveness.