Modified Variable Structure Estimation and Control for Constrained Landing on Mars

Document Type : Research Article

Authors

1 Aerospace engineering department, Sharif University of technology, Tehran, Iran

2 Aerospace Engineering department, Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

Landing on Mars is one of the paramount space missions undergoing various system and environmental uncertainties. Hence an exact model to represent the dynamic system cannot be achieved in advance, and subsequently, model-based navigation algorithms degrade. In this regard, the present paper has focused on a robust integrated estimation and control algorithm to attain accurate navigation in the presence of different uncertainties for the nonlinear problem of landing on Mars. The proposed algorithm has been developed based on the variable structure control framework. This method alleviates limitations of the existing algorithms including the requirement of the Jacobian calculation and the dimension equality for the state and measurement vectors via statistical linearization and the generalized matrix inverse theory, respectively. The performance of the proposed algorithm has been investigated via Monte Carlo simulations in the presence of different uncertainties including atmosphere instability and modeling errors, the time delay of actuators, the geometric constraint of the landing site as well as the saturation limitations of actuators. In addition, the obtained results have been compared to those of the well-known extended Kalman filter proportional–integral–derivative combination. This comparison proves the superiority of the proposed variable structure estimation and control algorithm in terms of accuracy and robustness.  

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