Distributed Synchronous Formation Reconfiguration via Low-Thrust

Formation reconfiguration (FR) and formation keeping are two sub-technologies of multiple satellite formation flying. FR aims to develop a control method to transform multiple satellites from the current formation configuration to a new desired formation configuration. In this paper, the concept of synchronization is introduced into FR, requiring every satellite to reach its designated position simultaneously. We design a non-singular fast terminal sliding mode controller, consisting of four items: (i) The equivalent control item is utilized to move the satellite’s relative state vector to zero along the sliding surface. (ii) The fast convergence item accelerates the convergence rate of the system in the terminal mode. (iii) The obstacle avoidance item is applied to avoid collisions between satellites. (iv) The synchronous convergence item ensures that the satellite completes the reconfiguration mission at the same time. It is proved that the fourth item is equivalent to Laplace matrix. Theoretical analysis and simulation experiments verify the effectiveness of the devised controller.