Fault-tolerant control of spacecraft attitude regulation: a concise adaptive dual-mode scheme

Purpose This paper aims to address the spacecraft attitude regulation problem in the presence of extrinsic disturbances and actuator faults. Design/methodology/approach Based on adaptive backstepping design technique, a new concise adaptive dual-mode control scheme is proposed, which can either use the fault information detected by fault diagnosis mechanisms or switch to the fault-unknown mode when the fault diagnosis information is non-existent for control signal generation. These two modes share an adaptive mechanism that reduces the complexity of the algorithm. Findings The new fault-tolerant attitude control algorithm can accommodate both modes with and without fault diagnosis mechanisms. Originality/value The proposed algorithm in this paper can be applied to both cases when the attitude control system is equipped with or without fault diagnosis capability. This also enhances the robustness of attitude control algorithm. This study performs numerical simulations and verifies that the algorithm could effectively adapt to both modes.