Search

This paper investigates the collision-free distributed coordination control of six-DOF spacecraft formation flying. Dual quaternions are used to develop the kinematic and dynamic models of relative translational and rotational motion between spacecraft. By assuming that the reference relative orbit and attitude information is only available to a subset of members in formation, an observer is introduced to estimate the reference information in finite time. With the estimates provided by the observer, a sliding mode controller is then designed for the coordination of six-DOF formation flying. Meanwhile, the artificial potential function method is employed to design evasive maneuvers in case of any collisions during orbital maneuvering. The overall stability of the closed-loop system is guaranteed by a Lyapunov-based method. The feasibility of the proposed control scheme is then demonstrated by a typical formation reconfiguration mission in a low Earth orbit environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Coordinated control problem of translation and rotation between two spacecraft is investigated in this paper. Using dual quaternion, we establish the relative coupled dynamic model in which the coupling effect between translational and rotational motion is indicated. Based on the logarithm of dual quaternion, a model-independent PD-like controller is proposed for spacecraft tracking control problem. The convergence of the closed loop system in the presence of external disturbances is proven theoretically. The validity of the proposed approach is demonstrated by numerical simulations. The advantages of the proposed controller are displayed by comparing with others. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The goal pursued by this article, is to evaluate the potential of sliding-mode control and estimation techniques, to address fault tolerance against a large class of actuator faults, including loss of controllability of the faulty actuator, for autonomous rendezvous between a chaser spacecraft and a passive spacecraft on a circular orbit. The proposed solution is based on the dual quaternion formalism, to describe in a single equation, rotational and translational spacecraft dynamics, solar array flexible modes, propellant sloshing, the most dimensioning space disturbances, and their coupling. Such a modelling formalism enables to propose a six degree-of-freedom fault tolerant control architecture, which relies on the generalized super-twisting control algorithm nested with a nonlinear fault estimator. An anti-windup strategy based on polytope algebra is applied to the control algorithm, to prevent instability due to actuator saturation when faults occur. Asymptotic stability of the proposed fault-tolerant control scheme is formally proved with respect to a wide variety of faults, providing that the first derivatives of the fault estimation error versus time and the sliding surface, are bounded. Intensive simulations from a functional engineering simulator that accurately simulates the rendezvous mission, are presented in the paper, as well as capture-oriented criteria. The presented results demonstrate that the proposed fault-tolerant solution is able to cover any kind of thruster faults, including total loss of controllability of the faulty thruster, as well as solar array flexible modes, propellant sloshing, gravity gradient, the second zonal harmonic, atmospheric drag and magnetic disturbances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]