Decentralized robust coordinated control for formation flying spacecraft with coupled attitude and translational dynamics

Abstract

This article investigates the decentralized coordinated control problem for formation flying spacecraft associated with coupled attitude and translational dynamics by probing into local information exchange among spacecraft. A six degree-of-freedom coupled model is established by employing the unified Euler–Lagrange formulations of attitude dynamics and translational dynamics. With the novel use of adaptive control, a six degree-of-freedom continuous robust coordinated controller is proposed in the presence of parametric uncertainty and time-varying disturbances with unknown bounds. Furthermore, it is extended to the case where both of switching topologies and non-constant communication delays exist. The six degree-of-freedom coordinated controller can guarantee formation spacecraft follow a time-varying reference trajectory while aligning their attitudes and keeping some special formation configuration. Numerical simulations demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme.