On-orbit autonomous operation cooperative control of multi-spacecraft formation

A feasible cooperative control strategy based on the information consensus theory is proposed for multi-spacecraft formation configuration initialization, keeping and entire-formation maneuver. There is a multilayer control architecture locally aboard each spacecraft of the formation employing the cooperative control strategy. Firstly on the reference point consensus estimation layer, a consensual reference point of total formation system is estimated according to each spacecraft's initial states and the information topology within the formation. Secondly on the cooperative guidance layer, the desired transfer paths from initial states to desired configuration states are obtained based on the model predictive function of entire-formation system with parallel computing. Finally on the cooperative control layer, the cooperative control law derived from the second-order consensus algorithm is employed in order to induce each spacecraft to track the desired path and the reference information of entire-formation maneuver coordinately. The simulation results demonstrate that the control strategy can implement formation configuration initialization, keeping and entire-formation maneuver if the formation information topology contains a rooted directed spanning tree, which also indicated the fine robustness properties of the control strategy and the control law.