Event-triggered sliding mode attitude coordinated control for spacecraft formation flying system with disturbances

• Published in: Acta astronautica 2021-11, Vol.188, p.121-129
• Main Authors: Di, Fu-Qiang, Li, Ai-Jun, Guo, Yong, Xie, Cheng-Qing, Wang, Chang-Qing
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Attitudes; Control methods; Control systems; Coordinated control; Disturbances; Event-triggered control; External disturbances; Formation flying; Numerical simulations; Robust control; Sliding mode control; Spacecraft; Spacecraft formation flying; Theoretical analysis
• ISSN: 0094-5765; 1879-2030
• DOI: 10.1016/j.actaastro.2021.07.007

This paper studies a robust attitude coordinated control method for spacecraft formation flying system in the presence of external disturbances based on event-triggered control and sliding mode control. To decrease the communication frequency of the spacecraft formation flying system, a sliding mode coordinated controller without Zeno phenomenon is developed by using a novel triggering condition. For the first time, the proposed method addresses the problem that the existence of the closed-loop event-triggered control system solution in the classical sense may not be guaranteed due to the sliding mode surface with discrete variables fundamentally. The theoretical analysis and numerical simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control approach. •A novel method is developed for the theoretical analysis of the complex system based on ETC.•The existence of the closed-loop ETC system solution in the classical sense is guaranteed.•Both attitude consensus and angular velocity consensus are achieved without continuous communication among spacecraft.•A novel triggering condition is established based on exponential function and hyperbolic tangent function.