Robust fault‐tolerant attitude synchronization control for formation flying satellites

Summary This article investigates the fault‐tolerant attitude synchronization control problem for a team of formation flying satellites. The dynamics of each satellite is influenced by nonlinearities, parametric perturbations, external disturbances, and actuator faults. A robust fault‐tolerant formation flying controller is proposed, via the linear quadratic regulation method and the robust compensating theory, for the satellite team to achieve the desired attitude synchronization. Robustness analysis shows that the attitude tracking error of the global closed‐loop control system can converge into a given neighborhood of the origin in a finite time. Numerical simulation results validate the effectiveness and advantages of the proposed formation flying controller for the satellite team.