Continuous finite-time extended state observer based fault tolerant control for attitude stabilization

This work investigates the challenging problem of fast robust fault tolerant attitude control for spacecraft to handle external disturbances, actuator failures and misalignments. More specially, a novel nonsingular terminal sliding mode based finite-time extended state observer is first designed to estimate and compensate for the lumped system faults or uncertainties. And the proposed extended state observer is analysed and proved to be stable in the sense of fast finite-time uniformly ultimately bounded stability. Then, utilizing the techniques of super-twisting and terminal sliding mode control synthetically, a novel continuous attitude control algorithm is developed. The finite-time stability of the closed-loop attitude control system is proved by using a continuously-differentiable, homogeneous and strict Lyapunov function. And also the proposed control scheme is continuous with the property of chattering restraining. Finally, some numerical simulation results are shown to verify the effectiveness and superior performances of the spacecraft attitude stabilization control system driven by the proposed fast robust fault tolerant attitude control scheme.