Event-Based Impulsive Control for Spacecraft Rendezvous Hovering Phases

TL;DR

This paper introduces an event-triggered impulsive control method for spacecraft rendezvous hovering, optimizing thruster use and computational efficiency while maintaining the chaser within a target region.

Contribution

It proposes a novel event-based impulsive control strategy specifically designed for spacecraft rendezvous hovering with orientable thrusters and dead-zone constraints.

Findings

Efficient control algorithm with low computational burden.

Controller maintains spacecraft within a bounded region.

Numerical results validate the proposed approach.

Abstract

This work presents an event-triggered controller for spacecraft rendezvous hovering phases. The goal is to maintain the chaser within a bounded region with respect to the target. The main assumption is that the chaser vehicle has impulsive thrusters. These are assumed to be orientable at any direction and are constrained by dead-zone and saturation bounds. The event-based controller relies on trigger rules deciding when a suitable control law is applied. The local control law consists on a single impulse; therefore the trigger rules design is based on the instantaneous reachability to the admissible set. The final outcome is a very efficient algorithm from both computational burden and footprint perspectives. Because the proposed methodology is based on a single impulse control, the controller invariance is local and assessed through impulsive systems theory. Finally, numerical results are shown and discussed.