Reaction wheel fault‐tolerant finite‐time control for spacecraft attitude tracking without unwinding.

Summary: This article proposes fault‐tolerant finite‐time attitude tracking control of a rigid spacecraft actuated by four reaction wheels without unwinding problem in the presence of external disturbances, uncertain inertia parameter, and actuator faults. First, a novel antiunwinding finite‐time attitude tracking control law is derived with a designed control signal which works within a known actuator‐magnitude constraint using a continuous nonsingular fast terminal sliding mode (NFTSM) concept. Second, a finite‐time disturbance observer (FTDO) is introduced to estimate a lumped disturbance due to external disturbances, uncertain inertia parameter, actuator faults, and input saturation. Third, a composite controller is developed which consists of a feedback control based on the continuous NFTSM method and compensation term based on the FTDO. The global finite‐time stability is proved using Lyapunov stability theory. Moreover, the singularity and unwinding phenomenon are avoided. Simulation results are conducted under actuator constraints in the presence of external disturbances, inertia uncertainty, and actuator faults and results are illustrated to show the effectiveness of the proposed method. In addition, to show the superiority of the proposed control method over the recently reported control methods, comparative analysis is also presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]