Robust Model Predictive Control for Spacecraft Rendezvous with Online Prediction of Disturbance Bounds
Francisco Gavilan, Rafael Vazquez, Eduardo F. Camacho
A Model Predictive Controller is introduced to solve the problem
of rendezvous of spacecraft, using the HCW model and including
additive disturbances and line-of-sight constraints. It is shown
that a standard MPC is not able to cope with disturbances.
Then a robust Model Predictive Control that introduces the
concepts of robust satisfaction of constraints is proposed. The
formulation also includes a predictor of the disturbance
properties which are needed in the robust algorithm. In
simulations it is shown that the robust MPC scheme is able
to handle not only additive disturbances (which are the ones used
in the formulation) but also large multiplicative disturbances and
unmodelled dynamics (due to eccentricity of the orbit of the
target spacecraft).