Flexible performance‐based adaptive fault‐tolerant attitude tracking control for input‐constrained satellite

Summary Under the actuator saturation and fault, the satellite attitude often violates the prescribed performance function, leading to the satellite attitude's instability. Therefore, the adaptive attitude tracking control problem for the satellite simultaneously considering the finite time‐based prescribed performance, the actuator saturation and the actuator fault is studied in this article. A modification performance function‐based control scheme is designed, which can avoid violating the designed modified performance functions when the actuator saturation occurs due to the actuator fault. A novel fault tolerant auxiliary system is developed, which is used to generate modification signals for adjusting the prescribed performance function. Consequently, the boundedness of all the closed‐loop signal under the designed control scheme is proved via Lyapunov function method. Finally, the feasibility of the designed satellite attitude control scheme is verified by a simulation example.