Spacecraft Rendezvous and Docking with Obstacle Avoidance Using Bounded Buffered Voronoi Cells
Nolan Chafe, Steve Ulrich · 2024
— This work proposes an online autonomous guidance algorithm for rendezvous and docking involving a controlled chaser spacecraft and uncooperative target in the presence of a dynamic obstacle. We propose the Bounded Buffered Voronoi Cell (BBVC), a modified Voronoi Cell bound to a finite region which dynamically adjusts its boundaries between other agents to introduce keep-out-zones around obstacles and targets. The chaser navigates to local targets within its BBVC, thereby avoiding collisions, as it navigates to and eventually docks with its target. This guidance algorithm is simulated to demonstrate its ability to generate collision-free paths.