The general objective of this Ph.D. thesis is to study the dynamics and control of rigid and flexible spacecraft supported by a high-fidelity numerical simulation environment. The demand for greater attitude pointing precision, attitude maneuvering or recovery with the increased use of lightweight and flexible materials necessitates the consideration of flexible dynamics in the control strategy. These highly nonlinear dynamics which increase the order of the system are extremely difficult to model with high degree of accuracy. A general model for attitude and flexible dynamics for a class of spacecraft is hence derived in detail based on the so-called hybrid coordinates approach. The spacecraft considered has a star topology with a rigid central bus and flexible plate-type appendages. Given that the flexible spacecraft is under-actuated, the input-output feedback linearization technique is specifically used to partition the system into two distinct parts, namely an external linear system and an internal unobservable nonlinear system. A general internal/zero dynamics theorem for a class of nonlinear systems is proved and then applied to a flexible spacecraft which results in a linear asymptotically stable zero dynamics. The overall closed-loop stability of the flexible spacecraft is also analyzed rigorously and shown to be locally asymptotically stable using the Lyapunov theory. The robustness of the controller against modeling and parametric uncertainties is examined through extensive numerical simulations. Overall, the feedback linearization control scheme has been proven to be feasible and efficient for the attitude recovery of a spacecraft and has also become front and center in other application areas in the recent years.
This paper presents a continuous optimization approach to DCOC and its application to spacecraft high-precision attitude control. The approach computes a control input sequence that maximizes the time-before-exit by solving a nonlinear programming problem with an exponentially weighted cost function and purely continuous variables. Based on results from sensitivity analysis and exact penalty method, we prove the optimality guarantee of our approach. The practical application of our approach is demonstrated through a spacecraft high-precision attitude control example. A nominal case with three …
The spacecraft attitude tracking problem is addressed with actuator faults and uncertainties among inertias, external disturbances, and, in particular, state estimates. A continuous sliding mode attitude controller is designed using attitude and angular velocity estimates from an arbitrary stable stand-alone observer. Rigorous analysis shows that the controller ensures robust stability of the entire closed-loop system as long as the observer yields state estimates with uniformly ultimately bounded estimation errors. In addition, a sequential Lyapunov analysis is utilized to obtain a convergent…
In this paper, attitude maneuver control without unwinding phenomenon is investigated for rigid spacecraft. First, a novel switching function is constructed by a hyperbolic sine function. It is shown that the spacecraft system possesses the unwinding-free performance when the system states are on the sliding surface. Based on the designed switching function, a sliding mode controller is developed to ensure the robustness of the attitude maneuver control system. Another essential feature of the presented attitude control law is that a dynamic parameter is introduced to guarantee the unwinding-f…
In this paper, anti-unwinding attitude maneuver control for rigid spacecraft is considered. First, in order to avoid the unwinding phenomenon when the system states are restricted to the switching surface, a novel switching function is constructed by hyperbolic sine functions such that the switching surface contains two equilibriums. Then, a sliding mode attitude maneuver controller is designed based on the constructed switching function to ensure the robustness of the closed-loop attitude maneuver control system to disturbance. Another important feature of the developed attitude control law i…
In this paper, the spacecraft attitude estimation problem has been investigated making use of the concept of matrix Lie group. Through formulation of the attitude and gyroscope bias as elements of SE(3), the corresponding extended Kalman filter, termed as SE(3)-EKF, has been derived. It is shown that the resulting SE(3)-EKF is just the newly-derived geometric extended Kalman filter (GEKF) for spacecraft attitude estimation. This provides a new perspective on the GEKF besides the common frame errors definition. Moreover, the SE(3)-EKF with reference frame attitude error is also derived and the …
The hand-eye measurements have recently been proven to be very efficient for spacecraft attitude determination relative to an ellipsoidal asteroid. However, recent method does not guarantee full attitude observability for all conditions. This paper refines this problem by taking the vector observations into account so that the accuracy and robustness of the spacecraft attitude estimation can be improved. The vector observations come from many sources including visual perspective geometry, optical navigation and point clouds that frequently occur in aerospace electronic systems. Completely clos…
This paper considers the prescribed performance control (PPC) of spacecraft attitude tracking under multiple physical constraints, focusing on the robust issues. A novel Barrier Lyapunov function is proposed to realize the guaranteed-performance control under angular velocity constraint without singularity. Additionally, an adaptive strategy for the performance function is presented to soften the constraint and quickly re-stabilize the system after severe disturbances occur, providing strong robustness. Further, an auxiliary system is designed to handle the input saturation issue, incorporatin…
This paper presents a novel Lagrangian approach to attitude tracking for rigid spacecraft using unit quaternions, where the motion equations of a spacecraft are described by a four degrees of freedom Lagrangian dynamics subject to a holonomic constraint imposed by the norm of a unit quaternion. The basic energy-conservation property as well as some additional useful properties of the Lagrangian dynamics are explored, enabling to develop quaternion-based attitude tracking controllers by taking full advantage of a broad class of tracking control designs for mechanical systems based on energy-sha…
This paper addresses the global exponential attitude tracking of a spacecraft when gyro measurements are corrupted by bias. Based on contraction analysis, an exponentially convergent nonlinear observer is designed first to estimate the gyro bias. Relying on this bias estimator and the quaternion logarithm representation of the tracking error, an exponentially globally convergent controller is devised. This controller stabilizes the unique equilibrium of the closed-loop system, where the tracking error is the unit quaternion. For more energy-efficiency and enhancing the robustness in the presen…
This paper focuses on the attitude pointing control problem under pointing-forbidden constraints and performance constraints. The spacecraft is expected to align its sensor's boresight to a desired direction, while the terminal control accuracy and the attitude adjustment rapidity should also be guaranteed simultaneously. To resolve this problem, a switching controller structure is proposed in this paper based on the reduced-attitude representation, fusing the artificial potential field (APF) methodology and the Prescribed Performance Control (PPC) scheme together. Firstly, a novel artificial …
With the development of the space missions, there are extensive missions in the demand of the prescribed time convergence. However, it is still a difficult work to combine the prescribed time method with the sliding mode control due to the infinite gain of the prescribed time method while approaching the prescribed time and two periods of sliding mode control. In this paper, a new prescribed time sliding mode control method is proposed for general systems with matched disturbances, from the second-order system to the high-order system. A novel sliding mode variable with explicit time term is d…
This paper focuses on the issue of how to realize spacecraft attitude control with guaranteed performance while conspicuously reducing the actuator acting frequency simultaneously. The prescribed performance control (PPC) scheme is often employed for the control with guaranteed performance. However, conventional PPC controllers are designed from the perspective of continuous system, which contradicts the "discrete" control logic in actual spacecraft control system, and such a problem limited the application value of PPC scheme in actual applications. In order to significantly lower the actuato…
Lightweight Model Predictive Control for Spacecraft Rendezvous Attitude Synchronization
Space Applications Group, e:fs TechHub GmbH（e:fs技术中心空间应用组）；Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, Ingolstadt University of Applied Sciences（应用科学大学英戈尔施塔特电气工程与信息技术学院）
This paper presents a method to control a manipulator system grasping a rigid-body payload so that the motion of the combined system in consequence of externally applied forces to be the same as another free-floating rigid-body (with different inertial properties). This allows zero-g emulation of a scaled spacecraft prototype under the test in a 1-g laboratory environment. The controller consisting of motion feedback and force/moment feedback adjusts the motion of the test spacecraft so as to match that of the flight spacecraft, even if the latter has flexible appendages (such as solar panels)…
Physics-based Online Adaptive Koopman Model Predictive Attitude Control for Combined Spacecraft with Dynamic Uncertainties
Zhengzhou Advanced Research Institute, Harbin Institute of Technology（郑州先进研究院，哈尔滨工业大学）；Department of Control Science and Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology（控制科学与工程系，哈尔滨工业大学）；School of Engineering, Newcastle University（纽卡斯尔大学工程学院）
The attitude tracking problem with preassigned performance requirements has earned tremendous interest in recent years, and the Prescribed Performance Control (PPC) scheme is often adopted to tackle this problem. Nevertheless, traditional PPC schemes have inherent problems, which the solution still lacks, such as the singularity problem when the state constraint is violated and the potential over-control problem when the state trajectory approaches the constraint boundary. This paper proposes a Singularity-Avoidance Prescribed Performance Control scheme (SAPPC) to deal with these problems. A n…
Small spacecraft now have precise attitude control systems available commercially, allowing them to slew in 3 degrees of freedom, and capture images within short notice. When combined with appropriate software, this agility can significantly increase response rate, revisit time and coverage. In prior work, we have demonstrated an algorithmic framework that combines orbital mechanics, attitude control and scheduling optimization to plan the time-varying, full-body orientation of agile, small spacecraft in a constellation. The proposed schedule optimization would run at the ground station autono…
Convolutional Neural Network Design and Evaluation for Real-Time Multivariate Time Series Fault Detection in Spacecraft Attitude Sensors
Airbus Defence and Space GmbH（阿依斯堡防务与航天有限公司）；Department of Space Systems Engineering, Faculty of Aerospace Engineering, Delft University of Technology（航天系统工程系，航空航天工程学院，代尔夫特理工大学）
In this work, we develop a numerically tractable trajectory optimization problem for rest-to-rest attitude transfers with CMG-driven spacecraft. First, we adapt a specialized dynamical model which avoids many of the numerical challenges (singularities) introduced by common dynamical approximations. To formulate and solve our specialized trajectory optimization problem, we design a locally stabilizing Linear Quadratic (LQ) regulator on the system's configuration manifold then lift it into the ambient state space to produce suitable terminal and running LQ cost functionals. Finally, we examine t…
The attitude stabilization of a micro-satellite employing a variable-amplitude cold gas thruster which reflects as a time varying gain on the control input is considered. Existing literature uses a persistence filter based approach that typically leads to large control gains and torque inputs during specific time intervals corresponding to the 'on' phase of the external actuation. This work aims at reducing the transient spikes placed upon the torque commands by the judicious introduction of an additional time varying scaling signal as part of the control law. The time update mechanism for the…
