This paper delves into a rendezvous scenario involving a chaser and a target spacecraft, focusing on the application of Model Predictive Control (MPC) to design a controller capable of guiding the chaser toward the target. The operational principle of spacecraft thrusters, requiring a minimum activation time that leads to the existence of a control deadband, introduces mixed-integer constraints into the optimization, posing a considerable computational challenge due to the exponential complexity on the number of integer constraints. We address this complexity by presenting two solver algorithms that efficiently approximate the optimal solution in significantly less time than standard solvers, making them well-suited for real-time applications.

翻译：本文深入研究了追踪航天器与目标航天器的交会场景，重点运用模型预测控制（MPC）设计控制器，以引导追踪航天器向目标靠近。航天器推进器的工作原理要求最小激活时间，这导致控制死区的存在，进而将混合整数约束引入优化过程。由于整数约束数量呈指数级增长，这一问题带来了巨大的计算挑战。为应对该复杂性，我们提出两种求解器算法，这些算法能够以远超标准求解器的效率逼近最优解，显著缩短求解时间，因而特别适用于实时应用场景。