Spacecraft robust attitude tracking design: PID control approach

The paper presents a robust PID control design method for spacecraft attitude tracking. Spacecraft control for large-angle control is subject to nonlinear couplings and uncertainties. Although nonlinear robust control design methods, such as nonlinear H_∞ control can be applied to address these issues. The solving of the associated Hamilton-Jacobi equation is often extremely complicated and the resulting controller is not easy to implement. In the paper, the PID controller architecture is assumed for the spacecraft attitude control and concepts in nonlinear H_∞ control theory are applied to obtain robustness properties. Results of both PD control and PID control are derived and applied to the ROCSAT-3 satellite of a science model system for verification.