Model Predictive Control of an Underactuated Spacecraft with Two Reaction Wheels

Christopher D. Petersen, Frederick Leve, Ilya Kolmanovsky
2017 Journal of Guidance Control and Dynamics  
This paper presents an application of model predictive control to the attitude dynamics of an underactuated spacecraft with two reaction wheels and zero angular momentum. Such a system cannot be stabilized by any smooth or continuous time-invariant feedback law. However, model predictive control has a remarkable ability to generate control laws that are discontinuous in the state and, as such, can be applied to this problem. The model predictive control formulation is analyzed in depth and
more » ... to produce an asymptotically stabilizing controller, which is discontinuous and enforces constraints. Simulations on the full nonlinear model demonstrate that model predictive control can successfully control the attitude of an underactuated spacecraft when the attitude maneuvers are sufficiently small. 2 6 6 4 cosθ cosψ cosθ sinψ − sinθ sinϕ sinθ cosψ − cosϕ sinψ sinϕ sinθ sinψ cosϕ cosψ sinϕ cosθ cosϕ sinθ cosψ sinϕ sinψ cosϕ sinθ sinψ − sinϕ cosψ cosϕ cosθ 3 7 7 5 (4) PETERSEN, LEVE, AND KOLMANOVSKY 321 Downloaded by UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN on April 5, 2018 | http://arc.aiaa.org |
doi:10.2514/1.g000320 fatcat:y2nal5njh5cqjctwfoce7pb4zq