Sliding Mode Control Techniques and Artificial Potential Field for Dynamic Collision Avoidance in Rendezvous Maneuvers

Abstract

The paper considers autonomous rendezvous maneuver and proximity operations of two spacecraft in presence of obstacles. A strategy that combines guidance and control algorithms is analyzed. The proposed closed-loop system is able to guarantee a safe path in a real environment, as well as robustness with respect to external disturbances and dynamic obstacles. The guidance strategy exploits a suitably designed Artificial Potential Field (APF), while the controller relies on Sliding Mode Control (SMC), for both position and attitude tracking of the spacecraft. As for the position control, two different first order SMC methods are considered, namely the component-wise and the simplex-based control techniques. The proposed integrated guidance and control strategy is validated by extensive simulations performed with a six degree-of-freedom (DOF) orbital simulator and appears suitable for real-time control with minimal on-board computational effort. Fuel consumption and control effort are evaluated, including different update frequencies of the closed-loop software.

Adaptive control of space proximity missions with constrained relative states, faults and saturation

“…Given the relative pose model of space proximity missions (3) under Assumptions 1-3 and a mild assumption that ∥u ∆ ∥ ≤ū ∆ with an unknown constantū ∆ > 0. If initial relative states are constrained by |e 1i (0)| < a ei and |e 2i (0 6), and the saturated adaptive controller ( 13) is designed with an auxiliary system (14) and adaptive laws in (15) under parameter tuning conditions…”

“…Based on the dual-quaternion model of relative pose motion, a non-certainty equivalent adaptive control strategy was proposed in [11]. Recently, a model-dependent adaptive controller was formulated for rendezvous and docking in [12], and the artificial potential field approach was developed for spacecraft rendezvous and proximity missions in [13] and [14] to avoid obstacles.…”

Safety-Augmented Operation of Mobile Robots Using Variable Structure Control

“…Sliding-based methods have been proven effective in the design of safety-augmented control of autonomous robots [2], [12], [26], [27]. Therefore, this paper provides control-oriented models and standardized design instructions based on a supertwisting algorithm to obtain a variable structure control with guaranteed safety features.…”

Suboptimal obstacles avoidance control of spacecraft rendezvous

“…For on-orbital servicing spacecrafts, autonomous rendezvous to target has attracted extensive research interests (Hu et al, 2018, 2019; Gao et al, 2009; Mancini et al, 2020, Yang, 2019). Several projects have been started to investigating safe and autonomous rendezvous problem such as the NASA’s DART program (Timothy, 2003) and the Phoenix mission (Gunn et al, 2015), and so forth.…”