A symmetric fully actuated system framework for unwinding-free spacecraft attitude control

The unwinding phenomenon, which occurs during spacecraft rotations, stems from the double covering property of quaternion representations. This issue can lead to rotation angles exceeding 180 degrees, thereby increasing the spacecraft's energy consumption. Numerous operations have been proposed within the state space framework to eliminate the unwinding issue. In contrast, this study investigates eliminating the unwinding issue within the framework of fully actuated systems. Attitude control laws designed under this framework possess a symmetric structure, making them inherently immune to the unwinding phenomenon. Consequently, the corrective operations introduced in the state space framework become unnecessary. Building on this unwinding-free fully actuated system approach, this work addresses robust control, adaptive control, and finite-time control of spacecraft attitude tracking.