ADP-Based Pose Control for Spacecraft Formation Flying System

This article addresses the optimized formation control problem for multi-spacecraft systems with limited energy. An adaptive dynamic programming (ADP)-based control method is proposed to tackle this problem. As a stepping stone, the system dynamics and configuration error are formulated, under the dual-algebraic framework and a certain communication topological relationship. After that, a dual-algebraic-based reward shaping is developed according to the formation control objectives. By introducing reward shaping, an online learning law is proposed to achieve real-time cost optimization driven by the measurement data, which enables an initial control strategy to improve to an approximated controller. Subsequently, the Lyapunov-based analysis theoretically guarantees the stability and optimality of the proposed method. Finally, the simulation results and comparison demonstrate the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed method in terms of control cost and time expenditure.