Multi-spacecraft system distributed cooperative tracking control with dead-zone input

More and more space missions require formation flying. Multi-spacecraft system cooperative control is one of its basic problem. Thus it should attract great attention. In this paper we investigate cooperative control problem of multi-spacecraft orbital tracking mission with input dead zone nonlinearity, system uncertainty, and external disturbance based on directed communication. We use graph theory to express the multi-spacecraft system. The key methods are neural network and backstepping technique. Neural network is used to approximate system uncertainty due to its outstanding approximation properties. A state feedback algorithm is designed by using backstepping technique based on Hill equation. We also compare the proposed algorithm with a common algorithm without considering dead zone nonlinearity. Simulation results illustrate that the proposed algorithm has a better performance in energy consumption and control performance. It is obvious that the proposed algorithm has great value of application.