Dynamic event‐triggered orbit coordination for spacecraft formation via a self‐learning sliding mode control approach

Summary This article investigates the issue of orbit coordination control for a class of multi‐spacecraft formation systems in presence of limited communication and external disturbance. To solve the limitation of communication sources, a dynamic event trigger (DET) mechanism is developed to reduce the communication frequency between the follower spacecrafts. Subsequently, we explore a robust DET mechanism‐based distributed self‐learning sliding mode control design, in which a variable learning intensity‐based iterative learning algorithm is designed to approximate and compensate space perturbation. This approach can guarantee an event triggering sequence without Zeno phenomenon and accurate coordination control for formation configuration simultaneously. Compared with the traditional event‐triggered control and other state‐of‐the‐art approaches, the distributed DET control scheme achieves higher control accuracy of formation configuration meanwhile requires less communication resource. Finally, a series of numerical simulations demonstrate the feasibility and superiority of the event triggered control method.