Velocity‐free attitude coordination control of multiple rigid spacecraft with practical predefined‐time convergence

The issue of velocity‐free practical predefined‐time (PPT) attitude coordination control (ACC) for multiple rigid spacecraft under directed topology and subject to bounded external disturbances is investigated in the article. To gain precise estimates of the spacecraft's velocities together with external disturbances, PPT extended‐state observers are presented by virtue of a time‐varying function technique. Next, distributed PPT state observers are designed to estimate the leader's attitude which is accessible to only some of the followers. One advantage of the designed distributed observers is that the information required to transmit among neighbor spacecraft is only the estimated attitudes, which results in a reduction of the communication burden. Then, a distributed velocity‐free PPT ACC law is put forward in terms of the backstepping approach and the PPT observers. The present control protocol can ensure that the settling time is bounded by a predefined time with no reliance on any other controller parameters or initial conditions. Finally, the efficiency of the developed ACC scheme is illustrated by numerical simulation examples, and it is shown that the designed control law possesses one further salient advantage of required reduced magnitudes of control torques to reach accurate ACC performance.