Cooperative Attitude Synchronization for Rigid-Body Spacecraft via Varying Communication Topology

This paper studies the application of nonlinear cooperative control theory to the attitude synchronization problem. To this end, explicit conditions, in terms of vector nonlinear differential inequalities, is presented firstly to ensure both the Lyapunov stability and asymptotically cooperative stability for a certain class of heterogeneous nonlinear system. Then, decentralized control algorithm incorporated with standard backstepping scheme is developed to accomplish attitude synchronization for a group of spacecraft with rigid body dynamics described by unit quaternion. In particular, the proposed control system imposes the least restrictive requirement on the communication, a piecewise constant, intermittently available, and sequentially complete topology is theoretically enough to ensure the asymptotically cooperative stability. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control algorithms.