Decentralized Autonomous Control of Aerospace Vehicle Formations

Abstract

Two approaches for the autonomous control of aerospace vehicle formations are developed. The development of the approaches relies on fundamental work in the areas of distributed control; specifically modal, robust, optimal, and decentralized control. The algorithms are shown to satisfy five separation principles that simplify design and enable the algorithms to be implemented reliably. The autonomous controllers uniformly dampen the modes of the formation (global control) using a decentralized approach and a nearest-neighbor approach. A numerical example illustrates robust formation changes from 9-vehicle (3 x 3) grids to V-type formations.