Anti-unwinding attitude control of rigid spacecraft with angular velocity constraint

An anti-unwinding attitude controller is presented under angular velocity constraint. As a stepping stone, a novel attitude error function is introduced to eliminate the detrimental unwinding phenomenon of the unit quaternion. Then, the angular velocity constraint is considered, and a new form of barrier Lyapunov function is used to achieve this constraint. Furthermore, a controller aiming at solving the preceding two issues simultaneously is presented, and system's asymptotical stability is guaranteed due to Lyapunov analysis. Numerical simulations are employed to demonstrate the effectiveness and merit of the provided controller.