Observer-Based Robust Control for Spacecraft Rendezvous with Thrust Saturation

Published version of an article in the journal: Abstract and Applied Analysis. Also available from the publisher at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/710850 Open Access This paper proposes an observer-based robust guaranteed cost control method for thrust-limited rendezvous in near-circular orbits. Treating the noncircularity of the target orbit as a parametric uncertainty, a linearized motion model derived from the two-body problem is adopted as the controlled plant. Based on this model, a robust guaranteed cost observer-controller is synthesized with a less conservative saturation control law, and sufficient condition for the existence of this observer-based rendezvous controller is derived…