Design and simulation of a hybrid controller for rendezvous and docking of a 3-DOF spacecraft

This thesis proposes a hybrid control strategy to solve the problem of rendezvous, proximity operations, and docking of an autonomous spacecraft in 3-dimensional space. Due to the different constraints and tasks to perform, a hybrid systems approach is implemented to solve the problem in three phases: 1. rendezvous; 2. docking phase; 3. docked phase; with range and angle measurements. A supervisor that robustly coordinates the individual controllers and induces robust semiglobal asymptotic stability is proposed. This thesis also includes designs of these individual controllers that solve the appropriate control problems for the individual phases. Numerical results for both the nominal and perturbed case validate the hybrid control strategy for the spacecraft close-proximity mission.