Adaptive leader-following performance guaranteed formation control for multiple spacecraft with collision avoidance and connectivity assurance

This paper investigates an adaptive leader-following formation tracking control approach for multiple spacecraft under a directed communication topology with consideration of external disturbances, formation safety and limited sensing ranges. Through developing a novel logarithmic potential function-based approach, the neighboring spacecraft can always move within the region of maintaining connectivity and avoiding collision. Additionally, by establishing a new state-independent performance function, the specified-time stability of the SFF system can be guaranteed, wherein, the convergence time can be arbitrarily appointed in advance. Compared with the existing results, the major advantage of the proposed scheme is that the specified-time stability, connectivity preservation and collision avoidance can be considered simultaneously with superior capacity of rejecting disturbance. Meanwhile, the formation tracking performance of the SFF system can be ensured a priori. By virtue of the Lyapunov theory, the detailed theoretical analysis for the proposed protocol has been derived. Finally, extensive simulations are carried out to validate the effectiveness of the proposed control protocol.