Safe Autonomous Docking of Spacecraft: A RRT-combined Output-constrained Recursive Control Method

In addressing the challenges of short-range spacecraft docking in the presence of obstacles and disturbances, it is critical to integrate guidance and motion control to ensure autonomous and reliable operation. Traditional methods that separate these two layers often struggle with accurately tracking predefined paths, increasing the risk of collisions. In light of this, a proposed scheme integrating guidance and control in an organic manner has been put forth. This scheme employs the rapidly-exploring random trees (RRT) algorithm within the guidance layer to generate a collision-avoidance trajectory for the control layer, efficiently navigating the spacecraft towards its target. Then the control layer implements a second-order output-constrained controller by adding a power integrator and a novel barrier Lyapunov function (BLF) together, to guarantee that the tracking error of the predefined trajectory remains bounded and the system asymptotically converges to the target. To account for tracking errors, obstacle radii are expanded during path planning through a dilation constant. Based on theoretical derivation and simulation experiments, the effectiveness and advancement of the proposed method are validated.