Three-axes Attitude Maneuvering of Rigid Spacecraft with Two Internal Torques Using Artificial Potential Function

This paper proposes a control algorithm for underactuated spacecraft with two internal angular momentum exchange devices. In this paper, a geometric constraint of the feasible angular velocity is characterized by the absence of one degree of freedom control torque under the assumption of zero angular momentum of the system, and can be further rendered as a keep-out pointing constraint for attitude dynamics. A special potential function is then proposed for system guidance to evade the unfeasible trajectories while achieving the convergence of the control system to the desired attitude. It is shown that the closed-loop system is ultimately uniformly bounded by the Lyapunov stability theory. Finally, numerical simulations are conducted to corroborate the effectiveness and performance of the proposed control scheme.