Finite-time attitude tracking control of stratospheric airship in the presence of multiple disturbances

This paper proposes a composite non-singular fast terminal sliding mode attitude control scheme based on a reduced-order extended state observer for the stratospheric airship’s attitude system affected by multiple disturbances. First, the feedback linearisation method is applied to address the nonlinearity of the attitude motion model and achieve decoupling of the model in three channels. Second, the overall disturbances, encompassing airship parameter perturbations and external disturbances, are treated as an aggregate. A reduced-order extended state observer is designed for each channel to formulate a composite non-singular fast terminal sliding mode surface. In the control design phase, the hyperbolic sine function is adopted as replacement for the sign function to ensure the continuity of the control signal. The estimated disturbances are incorporated in the control law design to directly offset the effects of multiple disturbances on the attitude motion of the airship. Third, based on Lyapunov theory, it has been proven that the control law can drive the attitude tracking error to converge to zero within a finite time. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed control scheme exhibits favorable disturbance rejection capability, as well as higher tracking accuracy and faster response speed.