Prescribed Performance Control of Spacecraft: A Fully Actuated System Approach With Experimental Validation

Abstract

To address the problem of spacecraft attitude and orbit control subject to parameter uncertainties and external disturbances, this paper proposes a fuzzy adaptive prescribed performance control strategy based on the fully actuated system approach. First, a six-degree-of-freedom second-order fully actuated system model of the spacecraft is established. Second, a prescribed performance function and an error transformation mechanism are introduced to transform the original constrained tracking error problem into an equivalent unconstrained control problem. The parameter uncertainties and external disturbances in the model are unified as a lumped unknown term which is approximated and adaptively compensated online using a fuzzy logic system. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed method is validated through six-degree-of-freedom numerical simulations, three-degree-of-freedom air-bearing platform simulations, and physical experiments. The results demonstrate that the method achieves high-precision tracking of spacecraft attitude and orbit under complex uncertain conditions. The video can be found at https://github.com/BeiBei-cat/Spacecraft-Attitude-and-Orbital-Control/releases/tag/V1.0 Note to Practitioners—Reliable attitude and orbit control is a key requirement for spacecraft operating in uncertain and disturbance-prone environments. For practical systems, guaranteeing prescribed transient performance and steady-state accuracy remains challenging in the presence of parameter uncertainties and external disturbances. To address this issue, this paper develops a fuzzy adaptive prescribed performance control method based on the fully actuated system approach. The proposed design explicitly constrains tracking performance and adaptively compensates for lumped uncertainties and disturbances during online operation. This enhances robustness in complex conditions. Results from numerical simulations and air-bearing platform experiments further indicate that the method shows good potential for practical implementation in high-precision spacecraft control tasks.