Adaptive attitude control for spinning flight vehicles with parameter uncertainties and actuator constraints

The parameter uncertainty of the dynamic model and the limited capability of the actuator pose significant challenges to the design of the autopilot for spinning flight vehicles. This paper presents an attitude autopilot design method based on singular perturbation theory and adaptive control theory to deal with parameter uncertainties and actuator constraints. First, the attitude dynamic model of a spinning flight vehicle considering parameter uncertainties and the actuator model considering dynamic and static constraints are established in the non-spinning body coordinate frame. Second, the overall dynamic model is decomposed into a reduced fast system and a reduced slow system using singular perturbation theory with the time constant of the actuator as the perturbation parameter. Then, an adaptive control framework with hedging modification is used to design the controllers for the reduced fast and slow systems, respectively. Finally, the reduced fast and slow systems are fused into a full-order system, and the stability of the closed-loop system and the boundedness of the tracking errors are proved on the slow timescale.