Attitude tracking maneuver using adaptive sliding mode control

Abstract

Attitude synchronization is a key technology to facilitate the capturing process of tumbling satellites. Tumbling motion of the satellites is a nonlinear system and the inertia ratio of the satellite is a dominant parameter of the motion. Estimation of the inertia ratio of the tumbling satellites is thus important function for a chaser satellite to synchronize its attitude motion with the tumbling satellite motion. The present study is devoted to investigate an adaptive sliding mode control (ASMC) algorithm applied to attitude tracking maneuvers. The adaptive law added to the sliding mode control (SMC) algorithm is employed to estimate the inertia ratio of the tumbling satellite. Attitude tracking performances of the ASMC method is studied numerically to compare with those of a quaternion feedback control method and a simple SMC method. It is shown that the precise synchronization can be executed by the ASMC method even if there exist some errors between the real value of the inertia ratio of the tumbling satellite and the estimated one at the beginning of tracking maneuvers.