Adaptive Augmenting Control of Satellite Attitude for Object Tracking from Relative Orbit

摘要

This paper presents advances in direct adaptive control, particularly the design and analysis of an adaptive augmenting controller (AAC) applied to spacecraft attitude control. The control objective is tracking a resident space object by a chaser spacecraft from a circularized relative orbit during proximity operations. The rigid body motion of the chaser is parameterized using quaternion kinematics to produce bounded and periodic attitude trajectory profiles for a natural relative motion with constant angular rates. Linearization about the constant relative angular rates results in a linear time invariant, multiple-input multiple-output dynamical system. By considering the corresponding periodic attitude profiles as persistent harmonic disturbances, adaptive disturbance accommodation is used within the AAC to condition the controller to track the reference signal and improve overall performance. The stability of the system is analyzed during the design process and confirmed through numerical simulations. The performance of the system is evaluated for a target tracking scenario involving a 6U CubeSat capable of 3 degrees-of-freedom rotational maneuvering; the satellite is simultaneously subjected to environmental sinusoidal disturbances. The results presented show improved tracking performance and input reduction in comparison to a fixed-gain control system for both, linear and non-linear plants.