Hyperbolic Sine Function-Based Full-State Feedback Attitude Tracking Control for Rigid Spacecraft

The attitude tracking control with unwinding-free performance for rigid spacecraft is studied in this article. A full-state feedback control law based on a hyperbolic sine function is developed such that the resulted closed-loop system can achieve two stable equilibria. By Lyapunov stability theory and Barbalat’s Lemma, it is proven that the obtained closed-loop system is almost globally asymptotically stable, and achieves unwinding-free performance. Further, by constructing a strict Lyapunov function, it is demonstrated that the two stable equilibria are exponentially stable. Moreover, subsets of attraction regions corresponding to each stable equilibrium are characterized. The simulation results illustrate that the proposed attitude control scheme can effectively avoid the unwinding problem during attitude tracking.