Decentralized Cooperation Control for Formation Flying Spacecraft

Cooperative and coordination control for Autonomous Multi-Agent Systems (AMAS) are gaining more popularity and interest in many areas of aerospace engineering such as air-traffic control, swarming satellites, launch/reentry-vehicle systems, and Formation Flying (FF). There are many advantages of cooperative control of autonomous FF of multiple small aerospace vehicles to replace a single large vehicle, such as increasing feasibility, reducing cost, probability of success, and significantly widening the operating area. For example, a group of cooperative Earth Observation radar satellites can enhance the overall resolution by observing backscattered signals from different angles compared to one giant costly satellite observing from one angle. Aerospace FF applications include distributed antennas, atmospheric sampling, and synthetic apertures radars. Besides, it is appealing to have a robust and optimal control for space manufacturing and servicing. Many FF missions using Nanosatellites have been launched recently. The Nano/microsatellites market is expected to grow as more companies develop smaller and cheaper launch vehicles. This paper demonstrates a model-based design for decentralized cooperation control as part of formation flying spacecraft using a single-integrator dynamic for deep space exploration missions.