3D attitude near-optimal control of a universal joint space robot model with initial angular momentum

This paper deals with a control problem for a space robot of two rigid bodies subject to initial angular momentum. We first give a model of a space robot with initial angular momentum, called the universal joint model. Next, we propose a near-optimal control method for nonlinear affine control systems based on the finite dimensional Fourier basis, and show a near-optimal control algorithm. Then, we apply the near-optimal control algorithm to 3D attitude control of the universal joint model with initial angular momentum, and illustrate some simulations to show the effectiveness of our method.