Facing future-oriented aerospace applications, large-scale space construction and on-orbit services have rapidly developed. In such emerging and increasingly complex spacecraft maneuvering and control tasks, more precise control accuracy and higher performance guarantees need to be fully considered due to the need for safe close rendezvous movements. This book is dedicated to solving the aerospace system’s performance guaranteed and precise control challenges with the expected transient and strict steady-state constraints. It is designed so that the aerospace closed-loop system can theoretically meet the pre-defined or prescribed performance requirements with the simple parameter selection. Furthermore, the expected performance constraints or indicators of the aerospace system time-domain performance response, such as settling time, overshoot, steady-state error, and state amplitude, will be directly guaranteed in the control design. Moreover, this book systematically proposes a series of spacecraft performance guaranteed control algorithms based on the practical situation of the aerospace system. For individual spacecraft, control algorithms that consider practical problems such as control task requirements, settling time constraints, transient performance normalization, input command constraints, and optimization faced by the on-orbit spacecraft are proposed to achieve the precise control objectives of the system under constraints and various complex situations. For the pre-combination and post-combination control of multiple spacecraft, game algorithms based on performance guarantees are proposed and thoroughly discussed. For spacecraft formations, control algorithms that consider full-state constraints, nonlinear uncertainties, output feedback, and collision avoidance are proposed. This book provides the theoretical basis and simulation experience for scholars and engineers to develop high-performance, high-precision spacecraft control algorithms. Furthermore, it hopes that these will contribute to the development of the world’s aerospace technology.

Previous research on fixed/finite-time sliding-mode control focuses on forcing a system state (vector) to converge within a certain time moment, regardless of how each state element converges. This book introduces a control problem with unique finite/fixed-time stability considerations, namely time-synchronized stability, where at the same time, all the system state elements converge to the origin, and fixed-time-synchronized stability, where the upper bound of the synchronized settling time is invariant with any initial state. Accordingly, sufficient conditions for (fixed-) time-synchronized stability are presented. These stability formulations grant essentially advantageous performance when a control system (with diversified subsystems) is expected to accomplish multiple actions synchronously, e.g., grasping with a robotic hand, multi-agent simultaneous cooperation, etc. Further, the analytical solution of a (fixed) time-synchronized stable system is obtained and discussed. Applications to linear systems, disturbed nonlinear systems, and network systems are provided. In addition, comparisons with traditional fixed/finite-time sliding mode control are suitably detailed to showcase the full power of (fixed-) time-synchronized control.

Previous research on fixed/finite-time sliding-mode control focuses on forcing a system state (vector) to converge within a certain time moment, regardless of how each state element converges. This book introduces a control problem with unique finite/fixed-time stability considerations, namely time-synchronized stability, where at the same time, all the system state elements converge to the origin, and fixed-time-synchronized stability, where the upper bound of the synchronized settling time is invariant with any initial state. Accordingly, sufficient conditions for (fixed-) time-synchronized stability are presented. These stability formulations grant essentially advantageous performance when a control system (with diversified subsystems) is expected to accomplish multiple actions synchronously, e.g., grasping with a robotic hand, multi-agent simultaneous cooperation, etc. Further, the analytical solution of a (fixed) time-synchronized stable system is obtained and discussed. Applications to linear systems, disturbed nonlinear systems, and network systems are provided. In addition, comparisons with traditional fixed/finite-time sliding mode control are suitably detailed to showcase the full power of (fixed-) time-synchronized control.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Social Robotics, ICSR 2021, held in Singapore, Singapore, in November 2021. The conference was held as a hybrid event.The 64 full papers and 15 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 114 submissions. The conference presents topics on humans and intelligent robots and on the integration of robots into the fabric of our society. The theme of the 2021 edition was "Robotics in our everyday lives", emphasizing on the increasing importance of robotics in human daily living.