Distributed adaptive control of spacecraft formation near an asteroid with input quantization

Abstract

While the collaboration of multiple micro-spacecraft around an asteroid enables the enhancement of geomorphologic information database, the limited storage and transmission capacity of micro-spacecraft, nevertheless, presents more challenges. In this Short Communication, an input quantization mechanism embeded in a distributed control architecture is proposed for spacecraft formation flying near an asteroid, such that the transmission burden of the formation system can be significantly mitigated with sequenced control command. In particular, an adaptive control scheme is developed to account for actuator failures and external disturbances, in which a hysteresis quantizer is employed in controller-actuator channel. The stability of the resulting closed-loop system can be guaranteed in the sense of uniform ultimate boundedness, provided the critical control parameters are properly selected. Simulation results validate the effectiveness of the proposed method.