LAUSR

This article investigates the guaranteed cost control (GCC) problem of nonlinear rigid‐body attitude systems subject to control saturation. A novel methodology is proposed, by which the nonlinearities inherent in the attitude dynamics are effectively accounted for and thereby the existence of the proposed controller is cast into linear/bilinear matrix inequality conditions without resorting to model linearization techniques. As a result, the underlying closed‐loop attitude system can be asymptotically stabilized by limited control effort and the defined cost function has an upper bound, by which four optimal GCC methods are further formed to minimize the cost index. Simulation results are provided that fully highlight the properties of the developed methodology in terms of cost guaranteeing and control effort limiting.