Thruster Limitation Consideration for Formation Flight Control

摘要

Physical constraints of any real system can have a drastic effect on its performance. Some of the more recognized constraints are actuator and sensor saturation and bandwidth, power consumption, sampling rate (sensor and controlloop) and computation limits. These constraints can degrade systems performance, such as settling time, overshoot, rising time, and stability margins. In order to address these issues, researchers have investigated the use of robust and nonlinear controllers that can incorporate uncertainty and constraints into a controller design. For instance, uncertainties can be addressed in the synthesis model used in such algorithms as H(sub alpha) or mu.There is a significant amount of literature addressing this type of problem. However, there is one constraint that has not often been considered; that is, actuator authority resolution. In this work, thruster resolution and controller schemes to compensate for this effect are investigated for position and attitude control of a Low Earth Orbit formation flight system.