Adaptive velocity-free feedback relative pose control of cooperative rendezvous and docking

An adaptive output feedback control design methodology is presented for cooperative spacecraft rendezvous and docking system without velocity and angular velocity measurements. A Lagrangian derivation of the rendezvous and docking model is considered to produce position and attitude dynamics for pursue spacecraft relative target spacecraft, assuming that the target spacecraft follows controlled attitude trajectory and transmissions its attitude information to the pursuer real time. Then, a control law is designed to provide a filtered relative velocity and angular velocity measurement and a desired adaptive compensation with uniformly ultimately bounded relative position and attitude tracking under the pursuer inertia uncertainties and bounded external disturbances. The simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of control algorithm for the cooperative spacecraft rendezvous and docking systems.