Robust formation flying control for a team of satellites subject to nonlinearities and uncertainties

This paper addresses the problem of robust formation controller design for a group of satellites the dynamics of which involve nonlinearities and uncertainties. A formation flying controller is proposed for the satellite group, which includes a position controller to form the desired accurate formation and an attitude controller to align the satellite attitudes. It is shown that the trajectory and attitude tracking errors of the overall closed-loop control system can converge into a given neighborhood of the origin in a finite time. Numerical simulation studies are provided to demonstrate the advantages of the proposed formation control scheme.