Artificial Potential Field and Sliding Mode Control for spacecraft attitude maneuver with actuation and pointing constraints

This study investigates the combination of guidance and control strategies for rigid spacecraft attitude reorientation, while dealing with forbidden pointing constraints, actuators limitations and system uncertainties. Reasons are related to the presence of bright objects in space that may damage sensitive payloads installed on the spacecraft, while saturations of attitude actuators may compromise the closed-loop system stability. In addition, the spacecraft attitude dynamics is typically affected by parametric uncertainties, external disturbances, and system nonlinearities, which cannot be neglected in the analysis. In this article, the problem of spacecraft reorientation under pointing and actuation constraints is solved with a strategy combining Artificial Potential Field (APF) and Sliding Mode Control (SMC). Following rigorous Lyapunov analysis, closed-form expressions for APF/SMC gains are obtained, i.e. explicit mathematical expressions that directly provide the control gain values without the need for iterative or recursive calculations, while accounting for angular velocity and control torque limitations, external disturbances, and inertia uncertainties. The robustness of the proposed control strategy against inertia uncertainties, external disturbances, and actuator constraints is validated through Monte Carlo simulations in a high-fidelity attitude dynamics simulator, while $\mu$-analysis is used to assess local stability properties and quantify the system’s robustness margins. These results demonstrate the practical feasibility of the proposed control method in real-world scenarios, highlighting its robustness in complex, uncertain environments typical of space operations.