Autonomous Spacecraft Attitude Reorientation Using Robust Sampled-Data Control Barrier Functions

Abstract

This paper presents a provably safe method for constrained reorientation of a spacecraft in the presence of input constraints, bounded disturbances, and fixed frequency zero-order-hold (ZOH) control inputs. The set of states satisfying all pointing and rate constraints, herein called the safe set, is expressed as the intersection of the sublevel sets of several constraint functions, which are subsequently converted into control barrier functions (CBFs). The method then extends prior results on utilizing CBFs with ZOH controllers to the case of relative-degree-2 constraint functions, as occurs in the constrained attitude reorientation problem. The developed sampled-data controller is also shown to remain provably safe in the presence of input constraints and bounded disturbances. Finally, the method is validated and compared to three prior approaches via both low-fidelity and mid-fidelity simulations.