Spacecraft attitude reorientation control method based on potential function under complex constraints

Abstract

A large number of sensors carried by spacecraft are facing the risk of irradiation, which may lead to the failure of sensors and affect the mission of the spacecraft. Therefore, it is significant to make the sensor work safely by attitude maneuvers. This article proposes a guidance algorithm for the attitude reorientation of rigid spacecraft, which aims to reduce the conservativeness of the traditional potential function and to solve the problem of the goal being non reachable with obstacles nearby (GNRON). While the rationality of the form design of the potential function is analyzed from the view of numerical calculation, a modified inverse-proportional potential function is designed based on it. Additionally, the anti-unwinding attitude error function is established to avoid the unwinding phenomenon of quaternions. In this paper, a set of weight assignment schemes for the potential function is proposed to obtain the maneuver path close to the edge of the attitude-forbidden zone, which reduces the conservativeness and energy consumption compared with the traditional method. Finally, the scheme can also solve the GNRON phenomenon. In the fourth section, the form design of the potential function is studied by numerical simulation, and the performance of the proposed algorithm is shown by comparative experiments.