Distributed Adaptive Attitude Synchronization of Multiple Spacecraft

This paper addresses the distributed attitude synchronization problem of multiple spacecraft with unknown inertia matrices. Two distributed adaptive controllers are proposed for the cases with and without a virtual leader to which a time-varying reference attitude is assigned. The first controller achieves attitude synchronization for a group of spacecraft with a leaderless communication topology having a directed spanning tree. The second controller guarantees that all spacecraft track the reference attitude if the virtual leader has a directed path to all other spacecraft. Simulation examples are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the results.Comment: 13 pages, 11 figures. To appear in SCIENCE CHINA Technological Science

Spacecraft Position and Attitude Formation Control using Line-of-Sight Observations

This paper studies formation control of an arbitrary number of spacecraft based on a serial network structure. The leader controls its absolute position and absolute attitude with respect to an inertial frame, and the followers control its relative position and attitude with respect to another spacecraft assigned by the serial network. The unique feature is that both the absolute attitude and the relative attitude control systems are developed directly in terms of the line-of-sight observations between spacecraft, without need for estimating the full absolute and relative attitudes, to improve accuracy and efficiency. Control systems are developed on the nonlinear configuration manifold, guaranteeing exponential stability. Numerical examples are presented to illustrate the desirable properties of the proposed control system

Synchronization of multiple rigid body systems: a survey

The multi-agent system has been a hot topic in the past few decades owing to its lower cost, higher robustness, and higher flexibility. As a particular multi-agent system, the multiple rigid body system received a growing interest since its wide applications in transportation, aerospace, and ocean exploration. Due to the non-Euclidean configuration space of attitudes and the inherent nonlinearity of the dynamics of rigid body systems, synchronization of multiple rigid body systems is quite challenging. This paper aims to present an overview of the recent progress in synchronization of multiple rigid body systems from the view of two fundamental problems. The first problem focuses on attitude synchronization, while the second one focuses on cooperative motion control in that rotation and translation dynamics are coupled. Finally, a summary and future directions are given in the conclusion

Comprehensive review on controller for leader-follower robotic system

985-1007This paper presents a comprehensive review of the leader-follower robotics system. The aim of this paper is to find and elaborate on the current trends in the swarm robotic system, leader-follower, and multi-agent system. Another part of this review will focus on finding the trend of controller utilized by previous researchers in the leader-follower system. The controller that is commonly applied by the researchers is mostly adaptive and non-linear controllers. The paper also explores the subject of study or system used during the research which normally employs multi-robot, multi-agent, space flying, reconfigurable system, multi-legs system or unmanned system. Another aspect of this paper concentrates on the topology employed by the researchers when they conducted simulation or experimental studies