Foundations of the Geometric Mechanics Udwadia-Kalaba Framework for Rigid Body Constrained Motion Analysis

Presented herein are multiple tools for constrained motion analysis extended to different dynamical frameworks. The Udwadia-Kalaba (UK) formalism for the constrained motion analysis of a point mass is a well-documented and applied methodology. Here, UK formulation is generalized to the dynamics of rigid bodies on nonlinear manifolds in the geometric mechanics framework. This approach simultaneously treats rotational and translational motion in a unified method without encountering singularites or non-uniqueness, issues that would arise were attitude parameterization sets used. The viability of this geometric mechanics UK formalism is demonstrated for the cases of fully and underconstrained systems. The nominal UK formalism requires the complete knowledge of the system dynamics. In the presence of unmodeled dynamics or uncertainties in the system, the stability of the system cannot be assessed using the nominal UK formulation. Therefore, a controller is presented that stabilizes the system under unmodeled dynamics and external perturbations. In addition, the UK formulation has been historically applied to systems with equality constraints. However, it has not been formulated for usage with inequality constraints. Here, the implementation of slack and excess variables to treat this class of constraints is presented for usage within the UK formulation for the point mass constrained motion with inequality constraints. Also contained within is an extension of pre-existing work which models the gravitational force acting on a rigid body from a nonuniform gravitational field that holds for any degree and order of spherical harmonics

Model Predictive Control Applications to Spacecraft Rendezvous and Small Bodies Exploration

The overarching goal of this thesis is the design of model predictive control algorithms for spacecraft proximity operations. These include, but it is not limited to, spacecraft rendezvous, hovering phases or orbiting in the vicinity of small bodies. The main motivation behind this research is the increasing demand of autonomy, understood as the spacecraft capability to compute its own control plan, in current and future space operations. This push for autonomy is fostered by the recent introduction of disruptive technologies changing the traditional concept of space exploration and exploitation. The development of miniaturized satellite platforms and the drastic cost reduction in orbital access have boosted space activity to record levels. In the near future, it is envisioned that numerous artificial objects will simultaneously operate across the Solar System. In that context, human operators will be overwhelmed in the task of tracking and commanding each spacecraft in real time. As a consequence, developing intelligent and robust autonomous systems has been identified by several space agencies as a cornerstone technology. Inspired by the previous facts, this work presents novel controllers to tackle several scenarios related to spacecraft proximity operations. Mastering proximity operations enables a wide variety of space missions such as active debris removal, astronauts transportation, flight-formation applications, space stations resupply and the in-situ exploration of small bodies. Future applications may also include satellite inspection and servicing. This thesis has focused on four scenarios: six-degrees of freedom spacecraft rendezvous; near-rectilinear halo orbits rendezvous; the hovering phase; orbit-attitude station-keeping in the vicinity of a small body. The first problem aims to demonstrate rendezvous capabilities for a lightweight satellite with few thrusters and a reaction wheels array. For near-rectilinear halo orbits rendezvous, the goal is to achieve higher levels of constraints satisfaction than with a stateof- the-art predictive controller. In the hovering phase, the objective is to augment the control accuracy and computational efficiency of a recent global stable controller. The small body exploration aims to demonstrate the positive impact of model-learning in the control accuracy. Although based on model predictive control, the specific approach for each scenario differs. In six-degrees of freedom rendezvous, the attitude flatness property and the transition matrix for Keplerian-based relative are used to obtain a non-linear program. Then, the control loop is closed by linearizing the system around the previous solution. For near-rectilinear halo orbits rendezvous, the constraints are assured to be satisfied in the probabilistic sense by a chance-constrained approach. The disturbances statistical properties are estimated on-line. For the hovering phase problem, an aperiodic event-based predictive controller is designed. It uses a set of trigger rules, defined using reachability concepts, deciding when to execute a single-impulse control. In the small body exploration scenario, a novel learning-based model predictive controller is developed. This works by integrating unscented Kalman filtering and model predictive control. By doing so, the initially unknown small body inhomogeneous gravity field is estimated over time which augments the model predictive control accuracy.El objeto de esta tesis es el dise˜no de algoritmos de control predictivo basado en modelo para operaciones de veh´ıculos espaciales en proximidad. Esto incluye, pero no se limita, a la maniobra de rendezvous, las fases de hovering u orbitar alrededor de cuerpos menores. Esta tesis est´a motivada por la creciente demanda en la autonom´ıa, entendida como la capacidad de un veh´ıculo para calcular su propio plan de control, de las actuales y futuras misiones espaciales. Este inter´es en incrementar la autonom´ıa est´a relacionado con las actuales tecnolog´ıas disruptivas que est´an cambiando el concepto tradicional de exploraci´on y explotaci´on espacial. Estas son el desarrollo de plataformas satelitales miniaturizadas y la dr´astica reducci´on de los costes de puesta en ´orbita. Dichas tecnolog´ıas han impulsado la actividad espacial a niveles de record. En un futuro cercano, se prev´e que un gran n´umero de objetos artificiales operen de manera simult´anea a lo largo del Sistema Solar. Bajo dicho escenario, los operadores terrestres se ver´an desbordados en la tarea de monitorizar y controlar cada sat´elite en tiempo real. Es por ello que el desarrollo de sistemas aut´onomos inteligentes y robustos es considerado una tecnolog´ıa fundamental por diversas agencias espaciales. Debido a lo anterior, este trabajo presenta nuevos resultados en el control de operaciones de veh´ıculos espaciales en proximidad. Dominar dichas operaciones permite llevar a cabo una gran variedad de misiones espaciales como la retirada de basura espacial, transferir astronautas, aplicaciones de vuelo en formaci´on, reabastecer estaciones espaciales y la exploraci ´on de cuerpos menores. Futuras aplicaciones podr´ıan incluir operaciones de inspecci´on y mantenimiento de sat´elites. Esta tesis se centra en cuatro escenarios: rendezvous de sat´elites con seis grados de libertad; rendezvous en ´orbitas halo cuasi-rectil´ıneas; la fase de hovering; el mantenimiento de ´orbita y actitud en las inmendiaciones de un cuerpo menor. El primer caso trata de proveer capacidades de rendezvous para un sat´elite ligero con pocos propulsores y un conjunto de ruedas de reacci´on. Para el rendezvous en ´orbitas halo cuasi-rectil´ıneas, se intenta aumentar el grado de cumplimiento de restricciones con respecto a un controlador predictivo actual. Para la fase de hovering, se mejora la precisi´on y eficiencia computacional de un controlador globalmente estable. En la exploraci´on de un cuerpo menor, se pretende demostrar el mayor grado de precisi´on que se obtiene al aprender el modelo. Siendo la base el control predictivo basado en modelo, el enfoque espec´ıfico difiere para cada escenario. En el rendezvous con seis grados de libertad, se obtiene un programa no-lineal con el uso de la propiedad flatness de la actitud y la matriz de transici´on del movimiento relativo Kepleriano. El bucle de control se cierra linealizando en torno a la soluci´on anterior. Para el rendezvous en ´orbitas halo cuasi-rectil´ıneas, el cumplimiento de restricciones se garantiza probabil´ısticamente mediante la t´ecnica chance-constrained. Las propiedades estad´ısticas de las perturbaciones son estimadas on-line. En la fase de hovering, se usa el control predictivo basado en eventos. Ello consiste en unas reglas de activaci´on, definidas con conceptos de accesibilidad, que deciden la ejecuci´on de un ´unico impulso de control. En la exploraci´on de cuerpos menores, se desarrolla un controlador predictivo basado en el aprendizaje del modelo. Funciona integrando un filtro de Kalman con control predictivo basado en modelo. Con ello, se consigue estimar las inomogeneidades del campo gravitario lo que repercute en una mayor precisi´on del controlador predictivo basado en modelo

Guidance and robust control methods for the approach phase between two orbital vehicles with coupling between translational and rotational motions

Les techniques liées au vol en formation et aux opérations de proximité de satellites autonomes font partie des technologies opérationnelles spatiales les plus marquantes et les plus ambitieuses de ces dernières années. En particulier, cela nécessite la complète maitrise des phases de rendez-vous proche et de survol par un satellite actif avec un satellite, une station ou un débris passif. Le développement de systèmes GNC (Guidage Navigation Contrôle) associés performants et sûrs repose sur la connaissance d'un modèle dynamique réalisant un bon compromis entre faible complexité et prise en compte suffisante des principales caractéristiques dynamiques et cinématiques de ce type de systèmes. La première partie de cette thèse est consacrée au développement d'une modélisation unifiée de la dynamique relative couplée entre un satellite coopératif chasseur et un satellite cible non coopérative. En effet, lorsque deux satellites sont proches l'un de l'autre, ils ne peuvent plus être traités comme des masses ponctuelles, car leur forme et leur taille affectent le mouvement relatif entre les points de masse décentralisés, conduisant à un couplage des mouvements de translation et de rotation. Ce développement est abordé de manière progressive: le mouvement de translation relatif non linéaire est décrit sous hypothèses képlériennes dans le repère orbital de la cible ainsi que le modèle linéarisé associé. Ensuite, le modèle non linéaire d'attitude relative est présenté au moyen des paramètres d'Euler-Rodrigues. Enfin, le formalisme des quaternions duaux est utilisé afin d'obtenir le modèle relatif couplé en translation et en attitude. La phase de modélisation du mouvement relatif linéaire de translation a ainsi permis de mettre en évidence certaines transformations de coordonnées conduisant à une caractérisation intéressante des trajectoires périodiques du chasseur et ainsi de proposer un premier type de loi de contrôle de guidage pour la phase d'approche et de survol. Dans l'ensemble de notre travail, nous considérons un chasseur équipé de propulseurs chimiques et l'hypothèse classique des poussées impulsionnelles. Ce type de systèmes dynamiques conciliant dynamique continue et contrôle impulsionnel se définit naturellement comme une classe particulière de systèmes dynamiques hybrides. Plusieurs lois de contrôle hybrides sont alors proposées afin de stabiliser le chasseur sur une trajectoire de référence périodique proche de la cible. Les propriétés de stabilité et de convergence de ces différentes lois sont analysées et de nombreuses simulations numériques montrent les forces et les faiblesses de chaque contrôleur en termes d'indices de performance comme le temps de convergence, la consommation ainsi que des contraintes de sécurité. Dans un second temps, des contraintes opérationnelles supplémentaires (contraintes de visibilité par exemple) sont prises en considération en imposant une direction d'approche rectiligne (glideslope) au chasseur. Cette trajectoire impose au satellite chasseur de suivre une droite dans n'importe quelle direction du repère local reliant l'emplacement courant du chasseur à sa destination finale. Sous l'hypothèse de propulsion impulsionnelle, les résultats existant dans la littérature pour ce type d'approche ont été généralisés aux orbites elliptiques en identifiant une nouvelle formulation du problème comprenant des degrés de liberté utiles qui permettent de minimiser la consommation de carburant tout en contrôlant l'excursion de la trajectoire libre en dehors de la droite de glideslope en la confinant dans un couloir d'approche défini par l'utilisateur. La synthèse des lois de guidage ainsi obtenues repose sur la résolution de problèmes d'optimisation SDP dans le cas général ou linéaire pour les cas plus simples d'approche standards du type V-bar ou R-bar.The techniques related to formation flying and proximity operations of autonomous satellites belong to the most significant and challenging operational space technologies of the last years. In particular, they require full mastery of the close-range rendezvous and observation phases by an active satellite with a passive satellite, station or debris. The development of efficient and safe associated GNC systems relies on the knowledge of a dynamic model that achieves a good trade-off between low complexity and sufficient inclusion of the main dynamic and kinematic characteristics of this type of systems.The first part of this thesis is devoted to the development of a unified modeling of the relative coupled dynamics between a cooperative chaser satellite and a non-cooperative target satellite. Indeed, when two satellites are close to each other, they can no longer be treated as point masses because their shape and size affect the relative motion between the decentralized points, leading to a translational-attitude motions coupling. This development is addressed in a progressive way: the relative nonlinear translational motion is described under Keplerian assumptions in the target's orbital reference frame, as well as the associated linearized model. Then, the nonlinear relative attitude model is presented by means of the Euler-Rodrigues parameters. Finally, the dual quaternion formalism is used to obtain the relative translational and attitude coupled model. The modeling phase concerning the linear relative translational motion has allowed us to highlight certain coordinates transformations leading to an interesting characterization of the chaser's periodic trajectories and thus, to propose a first type of control law for the close-phase rendezvous and observation phases.All along this work, we consider a chaser satellite equipped with chemical thrusters under the classical hypothesis of impulsive thrusts. This type of dynamic systems gathering continuous dynamics and impulsive control naturally belongs to a particular class of dynamical hybrid systems. Several hybrid control laws are then proposed in order to stabilize the chaser on a periodic reference trajectory close to the target. The stability and convergence properties of these different laws are analysed and several numerical simulations show the strengths and weaknesses of each controller in terms of performance indices such as convergence time, consumption and safety constraints. In a second step, additional operational constraints (line-of-sight constraints for example) are taken into account by imposing a rectilinear (glideslope) direction to the chaser. This trajectory requires the chaser satellite to follow a straight line in any direction of the local reference frame and connecting the current location of the chaser to its final destination. Under the impulsive propulsion assumptions, the results in the literature for this type of approach have been generalized to elliptic orbits by identifying a new formulation of the problem including useful degrees of freedom, which allow minimizing the fuel consumption while controlling the humps of the trajectory outside the glideslope line by enclosing it in a user-defined approach corridor. Guidance laws are therefore synthetized via the solution of an SDP optimisation problem in the general case and via a linear programming when considering standard cases like the V-bar or R-bar approaches

Spatial Formation Control

In this thesis, we study robust spatial formation control from several aspects. First, we study robust adaptive attitude synchronization for a network of rigid body agents using various attitude error functions defined on SO(3). Our results are particularly useful for networks with large initial attitude difference. We devise an adaptive geometric approach to cope with situations where the inertia matrices are not available for measurement. We use the Frobenius norm as a measure for the difference between the actual values of inertia matrices and their estimated values, to construct the individual adaptive laws of the agents. Compared to the previous methods for synchronization on SO(3) such as those which are based on quaternions, our proposed approach does not contain any attitude representation ambiguity. As the final part of our studies from the attitude synchronization aspect, we analyze robustness to external disturbances and unmodeled dynamics, and propose a method to attenuate such effects. Simulation results illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach. In the next part of the thesis, we study the distributed localization of the extremum point of unknown quadratic functions representing various physical or artificial signal potential fields. It is assumed that the value of such functions can be measured at each instant. Using high pass filtering of the measured signals, a linear parametric model is obtained for system identification. For design purposes, we add a consensus term to modify the identification subsystem. Next, we analyze the exponential convergence of the proposed estimation scheme using algebraic graph theory. In addition, we derive a distributed identifiability condition and use it for the construction of distributed extremum seeking control laws. In particular, we show that for a network of connected agents, if each agent contains a portion of the dithering signals, it is still possible to drive the system states to the extremum point provided that the distributed identifiability condition is satisfied. In the final part of this research, several robust control problems for general linear time invariant multi-agent systems are studied. We consider the robust consensus problem in the presence of unknown Lipschitz nonlinearities and polytopic uncertainties in the model of each agent. Next, this problem is solved in the presence of external disturbances. A set of control laws is proposed for the network to attain the consensus task and under the zero initial condition, achieves the desired H-infinity performance. We show that by implementing the modified versions of these control laws, it is possible to perform two-time scales formation control

Advances in Spacecraft Systems and Orbit Determination

"Advances in Spacecraft Systems and Orbit Determinations", discusses the development of new technologies and the limitations of the present technology, used for interplanetary missions. Various experts have contributed to develop the bridge between present limitations and technology growth to overcome the limitations. Key features of this book inform us about the orbit determination techniques based on a smooth research based on astrophysics. The book also provides a detailed overview on Spacecraft Systems including reliability of low-cost AOCS, sliding mode controlling and a new view on attitude controller design based on sliding mode, with thrusters. It also provides a technological roadmap for HVAC optimization. The book also gives an excellent overview of resolving the difficulties for interplanetary missions with the comparison of present technologies and new advancements. Overall, this will be very much interesting book to explore the roadmap of technological growth in spacecraft systems

Conference on Intelligent Robotics in Field, Factory, Service, and Space (CIRFFSS 1994), volume 1

The AIAA/NASA Conference on Intelligent Robotics in Field, Factory, Service, and Space (CIRFFSS '94) was originally proposed because of the strong belief that America's problems of global economic competitiveness and job creation and preservation can partly be solved by the use of intelligent robotics, which are also required for human space exploration missions. Individual sessions addressed nuclear industry, agile manufacturing, security/building monitoring, on-orbit applications, vision and sensing technologies, situated control and low-level control, robotic systems architecture, environmental restoration and waste management, robotic remanufacturing, and healthcare applications