Spacecraft formation control based on adaptive backstepping terminal sliding mode

This article addresses the spacecraft formation flying with interference or uncertainties that dissatisfy the matching conditions. A simple and nonsingular dynamic equation is applied, and the design of the formation controller is based on the backstepping method and the approximation strategy of radial basis function (RBF) neural network is employed. On this basis, the adaptive rate is derived according to Lyapunov stability theory. Furthermore, a novel nonsingular fast terminal sliding mode controller with application of high-order sliding mode principle is derived. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by an example.