A Multiple-Team Organization for Decentralized Guidance and Control of Formation Flying Spacecraft

Abstract

In recent years, formation flying has become an enabling technology for several mission concepts at both NASA and the Department of Defense. In most cases, a multiple-satellite approach is required in order to accomplish the large-scale geometries imposed by the sensing objectives. In general, the paradigm shift of using a multiple-satellite cluster rather than a large, monolithic spacecraft has also been fueled by the objectives of increased robustness, greater flexibility, and reduced cost. However, the operational costs of monitoring and commanding a large fleet of close-orbiting satellites is likely to be unreasonable unless the onboard software is sufficiently autonomous, robust, and reconfigurable.This paper presents the prototype of a system that addresses these objectives -a decentralized guidance and control system that is distributed across spacecraft using a multipleteam framework. The system is designed to provide a high-level of autonomy, to support clusters with large numbers of satellites, to enable the number of spacecraft in the cluster to change post-launch, and to provide for on-orbit software modification. The real-time distributed system will be implemented in C++ using the MANTA environment (Messaging Architecture for Networking and Threaded Applications). In this architecture, tasks may be remotely added, removed or replaced post-launch to increase mission flexibility and robustness. This built-in adaptability will allow significant or simple software modifications to be made on-orbit in a robust manner. The prototype system, which is implemented in Matlab, emulates the task-based and message-passing features of the MANTA software.In this paper, the multiple-team organization of the cluster is described, and the relative dynamics in circular and eccentric reference orbits is reviewed. Families of periodic, relative trajectories are identified and represented with static geometric parameters. An analytic solution for impulsive maneuvering is used for whole orbit-period control in circular orbits, and linear programming techniques are used to find time-weighted, minimum-fuel control solutions. Finally, the decentralized guidance law design is presented, with a comparison between the optimal and a sub-optimal assignment algorithm.

Autonomous Guidance & Control of Earth-Orbiting Formation Flying Spacecraft

“…Such examples are linear programming [51,35], multi-agent optimization techniques [57], particle swarm optimization [24], genetic algorithms [2] or optimal control theory [9,55]. These techniques use highly powerful numerical optimization algorithms to solve for the best maneuver to perform to reach a desired formation.…”

“…between 0 and 2ir, such as done by Mueller [35]. However, the translation of the problem into the fuelequivalent space leads to simple geometric relationships that can provide the closest location on a projected circular formation without the need for a systematic search.…”

“…This mapping is a way to rapidly compute the most fuelefficient way to reach a formation by taking the shortest path in the fuel-equivalent space, reducing the problem to a simple geometric problem. It avoids the need to perform a systematic search as is traditionally done [35]. Section 3.2 first reviews the impulsive feedback controller [43,46], upon which the fuelequivalent space theory is built.…”

Decentralized Formation Flying Control in a Multiple‐Team Hierarchy

“…The inverse transformation, converting from the Hill coordinates to geometric parameters, is found through simple algebraic manipulation. 19 Referring to Equation (6), we can identify the constraint for periodic motion. It is equivalent to setting the only coefficient on t equal to zero, to ensure that the along-track separation is not unbounded with time,…”

“…In a previous paper, 19 two types of model predictive controllers were presented for planning maneuvers in circular and eccentric orbits. The relative dynamics for each method are expressed in the Cartesian Hill frame.…”