A composite control scheme for 6DOF spacecraft formation control

In this paper, a 6DOF spacecraft formation control problem is investigated via a composite control method, which consists of a feedback control law based on a finite time control technique and a feedforward compensator based on a nonlinear disturbance observer technique. The composite controller can guarantee that the closed-loop error system is globally asymptotically stable with respect to a set of two equilibria, that is, the 6DOF spacecraft can reach the desired formation. Simulation results are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. The results show that the control performance of the proposed method in terms of both stabilization and disturbance rejection are considerably better than the traditional method.