Command filtered sliding mode trajectory tracking control for unmanned airships based on RBFNN approximation

This paper presents two sliding mode controllers to address the trajectory tracking problem of unmanned airships in the presence of unknown wind disturbance. The sliding mode controller proposed first is designed by a fast power rate reaching law(FPRRL). The disturbance is compensated by a radial basis function neural network (RBFNN). To avoid the aggressive adaptation, the controller is augmented by a command filter. The controller provides good robustness and tracking performance with no chattering under the hypothesis of ideal wind field. However, serious chattering occurs when simulation is performed under discontinuous wind field. To simulate the wind in practice, the wind field employed in the simulation is generated by the combination of a constant field and white noise. The controller is improved subsequently with an extended model to suppress the chattering induced by the white noise. The enhanced controller manipulates the derivation of system input, thus attenuating the chattering. Stability analysis shows that both controllers drive the tracking error into a controllable small region near zero. Simulations are provided to validate the performance of the proposed controllers under different wind hypothesis.     

Modeling and attitude control of CubeSat utilizing moving mass actuators

Any vehicle propelled by solid rocket motors (SRMs) must include an attitude control system capable of dealing with the torque generated by thrust misalignment. In order to expand the application of SRMs on CubeSats, an attitude control system utilizing moving mass actuators is discussed. The present research develops an eight-degree-of-freedom simulation model of a 2U CubeSat with two moving mass actuators. That model also considers the influence of propellant combustion processes. By analyzing the model disturbance source and systematic coupling, the key layout parameters are designed and a simplified control model is proposed. The controller is derived based on a combination of backstepping and sliding mode techniques. An orbit maneuver from 300 km circular orbit to 300 and 500 km elliptical orbit using this attitude control system is verified.     

Disturbance observer based model predictive control for accurate atmospheric entry of spacecraft

Facing the complex aerodynamic environment of Mars atmosphere, a composite atmospheric entry trajectory tracking strategy is investigated in this paper. External disturbances, initial states uncertainties and aerodynamic parameters uncertainties are the main problems. The composite strategy is designed to solve these problems and improve the accuracy of Mars atmospheric entry. This strategy includes a model predictive control for optimized trajectory tracking performance, as well as a disturbance observer based feedforward compensation for external disturbances and uncertainties attenuation. 500-run Monte Carlo simulations show that the proposed composite control scheme achieves more precise Mars atmospheric entry (3.8?km parachute deployment point distribution error) than the baseline control scheme (8.4?km) and integral control scheme (5.8?km).     

Automatic orbital docking with tumbling target using sliding mode control

The present study aimed to propose translational and rotational control of a chaser spacecraft in the close vicinity docking phase with a target subjected to external disturbances. For this purpose, two sliding mode controls (SMC) are developed to coordinate the relative position and attitude of two spacecraft. The chaser is guided to the tumbling target by the relative position control, approaching in the direction of the target docking port. At the same moment, the relative attitude control coordinates the chaser attitude so that it can be aligned with the target orientation. These control systems regulate the relative translational and rotational velocities to be zero when two spacecraft are docking. The robustness of the closed-loop system in the presence of external disturbances, measurement noises and uncertainties is guaranteed by analyzing and calculating the control gains via the Lyapunov function. The simulations in different scenarios indicated the effectiveness of the controller scheme and precise maneuver regarding the accuracy of docking conditions.     

Space-based line-of-sight tracking control of GEO target using nonsingular terminal sliding mode

This paper addresses the issue of high-precision line-of-sight (LOS) tracking of geosynchronous earth orbit target in highly dynamic conditions via spacecraft attitude maneuver. First, characteristics of the LOS motion are analyzed by a simplified linear relative motion model. Second, after transforming the quaternion-based attitude model into a double integrator system, a new nonsingular terminal sliding mode controller is proposed for spacecraft attitude tracking in a nominal case without parametric uncertainties and external disturbances. Third, an adaptive new nonsingular terminal mode controller is proposed for spacecraft attitude tracking in an uncertain case, which is done via constructing a pair of adaptive laws to estimate the parametric uncertainties and external disturbances online. The robust stability and finite time convergence property of the closed-loop system are demonstrated by Lyapunov theorem. Under control of the proposed controller, zero steady state error tracking of LOS with a smooth transition phase can be achieved in scheduled time, regardless of parametric uncertainties and external disturbances online. Finally, detailed numerical simulation results are presented to illustrate the effectiveness and performance of the proposed controllers. Contrasting simulation results shows that proposed controllers can track the desired trajectories effectively and have better performance against the controllers based on linear sliding mode and the existing fast nonsingular terminal sliding mode.     

Performance analysis of an attitude control system for solar sails using sliding masses

This paper deals with the attitude control performance analysis of a square solar sail. Two sliding masses are moved inside and along mast lanyards for the control around the pitch and yaw axes. An optimal linear controller with a feedback and a feedforward part is used to control the attitude of the sail. Numerical simulations have been carried out to investigate the system’s ability of performing precise and near-time-optimal reorientation maneuvers as well as the controller’s sensitivity with respect to the sail parameters, as the center of pressure to the center of mass offset or the sail’s size. Our simulation results are finally shown and discussed.     

Spin deployment of Hub-Spoke tethered satellite formation with sliding mode tether tension control

This work develops a tension control strategy for deploying an underactuated spin-stable tethered satellite formation in the hub-spoke configuration. First, the Lagrange equation is used to model the spin-deployment dynamics of the tethered satellite formation. The central spacecraft is modeled as a rigid body, and the tethered subsatellites are simplified as lumped masses. Second, a pure tension controller has been proposed to suppress the tether libration motion in the deployment without thrusting at the subsatellites. A nonlinear sliding mode control is introduced in the tension controller for the underactuated system to suppress the periodic gravitational perturbations caused by the spinning hub-spoke tethered satellite formation. The unknown upper bounds of the perturbations are estimated by adaptive control law. The bounded stability of the closed-loop tension controller has been proved by the Lyapunov theory. Finally, numerical simulations validate the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed controller, i.e., tethers are fully deployed stably to the desired hub-spoke configuration.     

Libration point orbit rendezvous using PWPF modulated terminal sliding mode control

The near-range rendezvous problem of two libration point orbit spacecraft in the Earth–Moon system is studied using the terminal sliding mode control which enables a time-fixed process with the flight time prescribed a priori. The underlying dynamics are the full nonlinear equations of motion for a complete Solar System model. For practical purposes, two means of pulse-width pulse-frequency (PWPF) modulation are employed to realize the theoretical continuous control with a series of thrust pulses. Extensive simulations with major errors taken into account show that the sliding mode controller can successfully guide the chaser to a given staging node with the final position and velocity errors, on average, lower than 20 m and 1 mm/s, respectively. Compared with the glideslope guidance previously studied, the proposed approach outperforms the former by saving approximately 50–60% of total delta-v.     

On the ability of sliding mode and LQR controllers optimized with PSO in attitude control of a flexible 4-DOF satellite with time-varying payload

Precise pointing of the satellite and its payload is essential in the accurate accomplishment of a space mission. In this study, the system of a satellite and its payload are considered as 4-DOF equations of motion. The time-varying payload can observe one direction of the Earth independently, and the satellite can point to the Earth station by its 3-DOF motions simultaneously. Sliding mode and LQR controllers are designed for damping disturbances, and consequently high pointing accuracy. Environmental disturbances and the associated time delay of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) are applied to the system. An algorithm based on Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) is proposed to find the optimum values of variables and Normalized Integral Square Error (NISE) of the two aforementioned controllers. Numerical simulations indicate the optimized magnitudes of target detection errors and control efforts in four directions. The results revealed that PSO-SMC can finely track the time-varying payload and has better efficiency in comparison with PSO-LQR.