Nonlinear Attitude Control for a Rigid Spacecraft by Feedback Linearization

Attitude control law design for spacecraft large angle maneuvers is investigated in this paper. The feedback linearization technique is applied to the design of a nonlinear tracking control law. The output function to be tracked is the quaternion attitude parameter. The designed control law turns out to be a combination of attitude and attitude rate tracking command. The attitude-only output function, therefore, leads to a stable closed-loop system following the given reference trajectory. The principal advantage of the proposed method is that it is relatively easy to produce reference trajectories and associated controller. The controller is also simplified with stable tracking performance.