Cooperative control with adaptive graph Laplacians for spacecraft formation flying

This paper investigates exact nonlinear dynamics and cooperative control for spacecraft formation flying with Earth oblateness (J
₂
perturbation) and atmospheric drag effects. The nonlinear dynamics for chief and deputy motions are derived by using Gauss' variational equation and the Euler-Lagrangian formulation, respectively. The proposed cooperative control employs adaptive time-varying Laplacian gains. The tracking and diffusive coupling gains are adapted by the synchronization/tracking errors and distance-based connectivity, thereby defining a time-varying network topology. Moreover, the proposed method relaxes the network structure requirement and permits an unbalanced graph. Nonlinear stability is proven by contraction analysis and incremental input-to-state stability. Numerical examples show the effectiveness of the proposed method.