Inertia‐free saturated output feedback attitude stabilization for uncertain spacecraft

Summary In this article, the problem of robust output feedback attitude stabilization control for a class of uncertain spacecraft is investigated, which contains external disturbances, model parameter uncertainty, unknown and uncertain inertia, controller's gain perturbations, measurement errors, and input saturation. The aim of this work is to design a dynamic output feedback controller such that the closed‐loop attitude system is stabilized, while the H ∞ norm of the transfer function from the lumped disturbance and measurement error to output is ensured to be less than a pre‐specified disturbance attenuation level, and the actual control input is confined into a certain range simultaneously. Based on the Lyapunov theory, the existence conditions of such controller are derived in terms of linear matrix inequalities. It is worth mentioning that the controller's additive and multiplicative perturbations are accounted for respectively. An illustrative example is given to demonstrate the effectiveness and advantage of the proposed control design method.