Implementação de um simulador para o controle de atitude em nanossatélites

Abstract

This work presents an attitude control simulator for nanosatellites which comprises a navigation system (attitude estimator) and a Proportional Derivative (PD) controller. The sensors used to estimate the attitude were composed of a magnetometer and a solar sensor, simulated by an ideal model with the addition of white noise. For the dynamic equations the nanosatellite is considered to have a rigid body and to describe the kinematic equations, quaternion was chosen. Within the navigation system, the norm-constrained Extended Kalman Filter has been proved to be adequate to estimate the angular velocity and its attitude using the sensors embedded into the nanosatellite. Different tests have been performed to validate the simulator, the navigation system and the PD controller. The results demonstrate that the set up is capable of stabilizing and correcting the attitude of the nanosatellite even in the presence of different perturbations, large angles and high angular velocities. Thus, the developed simulator presented adequate results, allowing it to be used in future nanosatellite studies.