Intent Inferring Based Human-Machine Game Control Strategy for Spacecraft Rendezvous

In this paper, we propose a game control method for a machine-controlled spacecraft to cooperate with a human-controlled spacecraft in near-circular orbit for a rendezvous mission. Inspired by the cooperative game theory, the two-spacecraft rendezvous process is formulated as a cooperative differential game (DG) with a common cost function. A challenging problem is that the intent of the human-controlled spacecraft represented by the weighting matrix in the cost function is not available to the machine-controlled spacecraft. To complete the rendezvous mission optimally, an intent inferring based game control algorithm is developed for the machine-controlled spacecraft. Specifically, an adaptive approach is proposed for the machine-controlled spacecraft to identify the feedback gain matrix of the human-controlled spacecraft online based on the system state alone with the concurrent learning (CL) technique; furthermore, the unknown weighting matrix representing the intent of the human-controlled spacecraft in the cost function is retrieved by an inverse differential game (IDG) method. Accordingly, the control law of the machine-controlled spacecraft is updated in real-time. The control strategies of the spacecraft converge to the Nash equilibrium. Finally, the simulation result is presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the approach.