New Class of Attitude Controllers Guaranteed to Converge within Specified Finite-Time

This paper introduces a new class of finite-time feedback controllers for rigid-body attitude dynamics subject to full actuation. The control structure is Lyapunov-based and is designed to regulate the configuration from an arbitrary initial state to any prescribed final state within user-specified finite transfer-time. A salient feature here is that the synthesis of the control structure is explicit, i.e., given the transfer-time time, the feedback-gains are explicitly stated to satisfy the convergence specifications. A major contrast between this work and others in the literature is that instead of resorting to feedback-linearization (to get to the so-called normal form), our approach efficiently marries the process of designing time-varying feedback gains with the logarithmic Lyapunov function for attitude kinematics based on the Modified Rodrigues Parameters representation. Saliently, this finite-time solution extends nicely for accommodating trajectory tracking objectives and possesses robustness with respect to bounded external disturbance torques. Numerical simulations are performed to test and validate the performance and robustness features of the new control designs.