Prescribed time attitude containment control for satellite cluster with bounded disturbances

The paper investigates the problem of prescribed time attitude containment control for satellite cluster with bounded disturbances. Two novel prescribed time sliding modes are initially designed, where the prescribed time is a predefined constant. Subsequently, based on the prescribed time sliding mode, two prescribed time attitude containment controllers are presented. Under the first controller, the followers’ states could converge to the stationary convex hull surrounded by multiple stationary leaders within the prescribed time. Under the action of the second controller, the follower can track the dynamic convex hull formed by multiple dynamic leaders within the prescribed time. Finally, simulations and a comparative study are conducted to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed control schemes. •The proposed novel prescribed time sliding mode can converge to zero in the prescribed time.•Because multiple leaders are stationary or dynamic, two prescribed time attitude containment controllers are designed. Comparing the presented controller with the existing finite time (Ma et al. 2015) and fixed time (Xu et al. 2022) attitude containment controllers, the proposed controller is observed to exhibit well coordination performance, faster convergence rate, and lower applied control torque.•This paper considers the bounded disturbances experienced by satellite cluster.