6-DOF robust adaptive terminal sliding mode control for spacecraft formation flying

This paper addresses the tracking control problem of the leader–follower spacecraft formation, by which we mean that the relative motion between the leader and the follower is required to track a desired time-varying trajectory given in advance. Using dual number, the six-degree-of-freedom motion of the follower spacecraft relative to the leader spacecraft is modeled, where the coupling effect between the translational motion and the rotational one is accounted. A robust adaptive terminal sliding mode control law, including the adaptive algorithms, is proposed to ensure the finite time convergence of the relative motion tracking errors despite the presence of model uncertainties and external disturbances, based on which a modified controller is furthermore developed to solve the dual-equilibrium problem caused by dual quaternion representation. In addition, to alleviate the chattering, hyperbolic tangent function is adopted to substitute for the sign function. And by theoretical analysis, it is proved that the tracking error in such case will converge to a neighborhood of the origin in finite time. Finally, numerical simulations are performed to demonstrate the validity of the proposed approaches.

► The 6-DOF relative coupled dynamics is derived based on dual number.
► The proposed robust adaptive terminal sliding mode control scheme can guarantee finite time convergence.
► A modified controller is developed to solve the dual-equilibrium problem.
► Hyperbolic tangent function is utilized to alleviate the chattering.