Semiglobal Exponential Stability for Dual-Quaternion-Based Rigid-Body Tracking Control

Semi-Global Exponential Stability (SGES) is proven for the combined attitude and position rigid-body motion tracking problem, presenting a significant upgrade compared to previously proposed controllers which can only guarantee asymptotic stability. Dual quaternions are used to jointly represent the rotational and translational tracking error dynamics of the rigid body. A novel nonlinear feedback tracking controller is proposed, and a Lyapunov-based analysis is provided to prove SGES of the closed-loop dynamics. The analysis does not place any restrictions on the reference trajectory or the feedback gains. This stronger SGES result aids in further analyzing the robustness of the rigid-body system by establishing input-to-state stability (ISS) in the presence of time-varying additive and bounded external disturbances. Motivated by the fact that, in many aerospace applications, stringent adherence to safety constraints such as approach path and input constraints is critical for overall mission success, a framework for safe control of spacecraft is presented that combines the proposed feedback controller with control barrier functions. Numerical simulations are provided to verify the SGES and ISS results and also showcase the efficacy of the proposed nonlinear feedback controller in several nontrivial scenarios, including trajectory tracking, transposition and docking, flip maneuvers, collision avoidance, and rendezvous.