Spacecraft Attitude Maneuver Planning Based on Rapidly Exploring Random Tree and Sliding Mode Control

During the orbit time of a spacecraft, a great variety of attitude maneuver operations need to be accomplished according to the requirements of mission. How to satisfy the complicated pointing constraints is one of the problems need to be solved in the future space mission. An algorithm of constrained attitude path generation of spacecraft based on Rapidly Exploring Random Tree(RRT) and Sliding Mode Control(SMC) is proposed in this paper. Using RRT as a global planner, the uniformly distributed nodes in Quaternion Space of Attitude are randomly sampled, the expanded nodes of which are kept to check whether they are in obstacle zone. By this means the satisfaction of pointing constraints is guaranteed. In the meantime, under the condition of the inputs of control satisfying the saturation constraint, the SMC method is introduced to expand the local nodes in order to meet the satisfaction of the pointing and dynamic constraints respectively, also the maneuver path of Kino dynamics is generated. Finally, the simulation results and analysis validate the advantages of the proposed algorithm.