Attitude-orbit coupled sliding mode tracking control for spacecraft formation with event-triggered transmission

In this paper, the event-triggered integrated attitude and orbit control problem is studied for the distributed spacecraft formation system. First, the operation rules of dual numbers and dual quaternion are presented, and the attitude-orbit coupling error dynamics models for single spacecraft and spacecraft formation are established based on the dual quaternion. An event-triggered attitude-orbit coupled sliding mode tracking control law is proposed to stabilize the attitude-orbit control system, which can reduce the communication burden among spacecraft at the same time. Under the developed control scheme, the state trajectory of attitude-orbit control systems can arrive on the designed sliding surface in finite time, and the asymptotic stability of the overall formation control system can be ensured. Considering the fact that the inertia and mass parameters in practice may not be measured exactly, an adaptive sliding mode control law is further proposed. Finally, a simulation example is given to verify the validity and feasibility of the proposed spacecraft event-triggered control method.