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：本文研究了追踪航天器与目标航天器的交会场景，重点探讨了应用模型预测控制（MPC）设计能够引导追踪器接近目标的控制器。航天器推进器的工作机制要求最短激活时间，由此产生的控制死区导致优化问题引入混合整数约束。这类约束的指数级计算复杂度构成了重大挑战。我们提出两种求解器算法，能以远低于标准求解器的计算时间高效逼近最优解，使其特别适用于实时场景。