Artificial potential field based robust adaptive control for spacecraft rendezvous and docking under motion constraint

This paper studied the robust safety control problem for spacecraft proximity maneuvers in the presence of parametric uncertainties, external disturbances, and motion constraint. First, a cardioid-based curve is utilized to describe motion constraint, and two artificial potential fields are established to describe the collision-avoidance requirement. Then, by combining artificial potential field with the backstepping methodology, a robust safety control strategy is designed for close-range proximity operations with time-varying nonconvex motion constraint. Compared with the existing works, the presented control scheme can guarantee the convergence of relative pose errors, and ensure no collision happens between the two spacecraft during the rendezvous and proximity process. Finally, simulation results are provided to illustrate the feasibility of the presented control approach.