Event-Triggered Fixed-Time Control for Six-Degrees-of-Freedom Spacecraft Formation with Actuator Saturation

Abstract

This paper addresses the fixed-time, six-degrees-of-freedom control problem for the distributed spacecraft formation system subject to actuator saturation, considering limited communication resources. Since only a fraction of the follower spacecraft can contact the virtual leader, a distributed fixed-time observer is designed to reconstruct the leader’s information. Subsequently, a distributed fixed-time, six-degrees-of-freedom controller is established, compensating the actuator’s magnitude and the rate saturation problem with an auxiliary system. In particular, this paper proposes a novel event-triggered mechanism in the framework of the “adding a power integrator” technique, avoiding the unnecessary occupancy of communication resources significantly. Finally, numerical simulations demonstrate the advantages of the theoretical results.