Coordinated Attitude Synchronization and Tracking Control of Multiple Spacecraft Over a Communication Network With a Switching Topology

This paper investigates the coordinated attitude synchronization and tracking problems of multiple rigid-body spacecraft subject to inaccurate inertial parameters. Two adaptive distributed control algorithms are developed based on communications among spacecraft connected through a switching communication network, which allow each switching subgraph to be disconnected. In the first place, by introducing an adaptive strategy for the inertial parameters, a distributed attitude synchronization control algorithm is designed. In particular, a gain selection criteria is specified for the asymptotic attitude synchronization under uniform joint connectivity. In the second place, for the coordinated attitude tracking problem, we first develop a distributed observer for each spacecraft to estimate the reference information associated with a leader over a switching network with uniform joint quasi-strong connectivity. Then, we propose an adaptive tracking scheme such that each spacecraft tracks the estimated information. Finally, numerical examples are given to validate the effectiveness of two proposed adaptive distributed control algorithms.