Relative Attitude Dynamics and Control of Spacecraft Formation Flying Considering Flexible Panels

As a key technology for orbital applications, researches on spacecraft formation flying(SFF) attract more attention. However, most of existing researches about dynamics and control of SFF focus on rigid spacecrafts without considering the effect of flexible attachments(such as flexible panels). In this paper, relative attitude dynamics and active control of SFF for a flexible spacecraft(follower spacecraft) and a rigid spacecraft(target spacecraft) are investigated. Firstly, a dynamic model of the flexible spacecraft is established by the principle of angular momentum. Then, the equation of relative attitude dynamics between the flexible spacecraft and the rigid spacecraft is derived by the quaternion to represent the attitude relation of the two spacecrafts. Finally,an attitude feedback controller is designed for the SFF system, and its stability is proved by the Lyapunov stability theory. Simulation results indicate that the panel flexibility has an obvious influence on the dynamic behaviour of the system, the designed controller can effectively control the attitude of the two spacecrafts to achieve synchronization, and the elastic vibration of the panels may be suppressed simultaneously.

Relative Position and Attitude Control for Drag-Free Satellite with Prescribed Performance and Actuator Saturation

An adaptive prescribed performance control scheme is proposed for the drag free satellite in the presence of actuator saturation and external disturbances.The relative translation and rotation dynamics between the test mass and outer satellite are firstly derived.To guarantee prescribed performance bounds on the transient and steady control errors of relative states,a performance constrained control law is formulated with an error transformed function.In addition,the requirements to know the system parameters and the upper bound of the external disturbance in advance have been eliminated by adaptive updating technique.A command filter is concurrently used to overcome the problem of explosion of complexity inherent in the backstepping control design.Subsequently,a novel auxiliary system is constructed to compensate the adverse effects of the actuator saturation constrains.It is proved that all signals in the closed?loop system are ultimately bounded and prescribed performance of relative position and attitude control errors are guaranteed.Finally,numerical simulation results are given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

Monocular Vision-based Two-stage Iterative Algorithm for Relative Position and Attitude Estimation of Docking Spacecraft

Visual sensors are used to measure the relative state of the chaser spacecraft to the target spacecraft during close range ren- dezvous phases. This article proposes a two-stage iterative algorithm based on an inverse projection ray approach to address the relative position and attitude estimation by using feature points and monocular vision. It consists of two stages： absolute orienta- tion and depth recovery. In the first stage, Umeyama＇s algorithm is used to fit the three-dimensional （3D） model set and estimate the 3D point set while in the second stage, the depths of the observed feature points are estimated. This procedure is repeated until the result converges. Moreover, the effectiveness and convergence of the proposed algorithm are verified through theoreti- cal analysis and mathematical simulation.

DUAL QUATERNION CURVE INTERPOLATION ALGORITHM FOR FORMATION SATELLITES

The traditional algorithms for formation flying satellites treat the satellite position and attitude sepa- rately. A novel algorithm combining satellite attitude with position is proposed. The principal satellite trajectory is obtained by dual quaternion interpolation, then the relative position and attitude of the deputy satellite are ob- tained by dual quaternion modeling on the principal satellite. Through above process, relative position and atti- tude are unified. Compared with the orbital parameter and the quaternion methods, the simulation result proves that the algorithm can unify position and attitude, and satisfy the precision requirement of formation flying satel- lites.

Three-dimensional analysis of relationship between relative orientation and motion modes

Target motion modes have a close relationship with the relative orientation of missile-totarget in three-dimensional highly maneuvering target interception. From the perspective of relationship between the sensor coordinate system and the target body coordinate system, a basic model of sensor is stated and the definition of relative angular velocity between the two coordinate systems is introduced firstly. Then, the three-dimensional analytic expressions of relative angular velocity for different motion modes are derived and simplified by analyzing the influences of target centroid motion, rotation around centroid and relative motion. Finally, the relationships of the relative angular velocity directions and values with motion modes are discussed. Simulation results validate the rationality of the theoretical analysis. It is demonstrated that there are significant differences of the relative orientation in different motion modes which include luxuriant information about motion modes. The conclusions are significant for the research of motion mode identification,maneuver detection, maneuvering target tracking and interception using target signatures.

Fully Actuated System Approach for 6DOF Spacecraft Control Based on Extended State Observer

This paper deals with the problem of position and attitude tracking control for a rigid spacecraft.A fully actuated system(FAS)model for the six degree-of-freedom(6DOF)spacecraft motion is derived first from the state-space model by variable elimination.Considering the uncertainties from external disturbance,unknown motion information,and uncertain inertia properties,an extended state observer(ESO)is designed to estimate the total disturbance.Then,a tracking controller based on FAS approach is designed,and this makes the closed-loop system a constant linear one with an arbitrarily assignable eigenstructure.The solution to the parameter matrices of the observer and controller is given subsequently.It is proved via the Lyapunov stability theory that the observer errors and tracking errors both converge into the neighborhood of the origin.Finally,numerical simulation demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed controller.