Compound control for autonomous docking to a three-axis tumbling target

This paper investigates the coupled position and attitude control problem of an on-orbit servicing spacecraft autonomous docking to a three-axis freely tumbling target in space. A compound control law is presented to guarantee that the docking port of servicing spacecraft is always directing towards the docking port of tumbling target, which is accomplished through the combination of the coupled relative position tracking and relative attitude control. For the purpose of avoiding collision between the two spacecraft, a two-phased approach for the terminal approaching the tumbling target is proposed. Also, the compound control is composed of a nonlinear feedback control law and an integral sliding mode control law. The nonlinear feedback control law is mainly used to track the system command and the integral sliding mode control law is mainly used to deal with the external disturbances and system uncertainties to enhance the robustness of the control system. Furthermore, the control saturation problem is considered. In addition, the characteristic of integral sliding mode under the control constraint and measurement noise is also analyzed. Finally, several numerical simulations are performed to verify the effectiveness and robustness of the compound control law for autonomous docking to a three-axis freely tumbling target.