Finite‐Time Output Feedback Circular Orbital Rendezvous With Sensor Delays

ABSTRACT This article studies the finite‐time output feedback control design problem of a circular orbital spacecraft rendezvous system with sensor delay. First, hyperbolic partial differential equations are introduced to transform the circular orbital spacecraft rendezvous system with sensor delay into the cascaded ordinary differential equation‐partial differential equation (ODE‐PDE), which is a delay‐free cascaded ODE‐PDE system. Second, a novel nonlinear observer system is constructed to estimate the state of this delay‐free cascaded ODE‐PDE system. Third, the periodic delay output feedback control based on the observer is designed to accomplish the circular orbital spacecraft rendezvous mission in finite time. Finally, a practical example is provided to verify the effectiveness and practicability of the proposed control design approach.