Cooperative formation control of multiple aerial vehicles based on guidance route in a complex task environment

In recent years, formation control of multi-agent has been a significant research subject in the field of cooperative control. However, previous works have mainly concentrated on formation control for simple point-mass model and linear model. In contrast, this paper presents a novel cooperative algorithm for multiple air vehicles formation control, which aims to devise a control strategy based on guidance route to achieve precisely coordinated formation control for a group of fixed-wing aircraft in a complex task environment. The proposed method introduces the leader-follower structure for effective organization of the multi-agent coordination. Moreover, the Partial Integrated Formation and Control (PIFC) is adopted to design the control law for Guidance-Route based Formation Control (GRFC). Additionally, the proposed approach designs two guidance-route generation strategies for two special situations to demonstrate the effectiveness of GRFC in complex task environments. Theoretical analysis reveals that the proposed control protocol for guidance command can ensure the overall stability and tracking accuracy of the system. Numerical simulations are performed to illustrate the theoretical results, and verify that the proposed approach can achieve coordinated formation control precisely in a complex task environment.     

6-DOF formation keeping control for an invariant three-craft triangular electromagnetic formation

Spacecraft relative motion with inter-craft electromagnetic force has distinct advantages, and its invariant shapes that are convenient for formation keeping ensure some potential significant applications. However, the electromagnetic actuators affect both the relative trajectory and attitude motion, complicating related researches on issues of invariant shape design and formation control. In this paper, the formation keeping problem for an invariant three-craft triangular electromagnetic formation is investigated on the basis of a 6-DOF full nonlinear dynamic model. Moreover, a combined control scheme consisting of feed-forward and feed-back control components is proposed to handle the high nonlinearity, strong coupling, model uncertainties and external disturbances. The feed-forward component is obtained through desired invariant shape design which is complicated by the coupling and superposition effects of any two distinct magnetic dipoles, and the feed-back component is developed with a combination of linear feed-back controller by the LQR method and active disturbance rejection by the extended state observer. Finally, the numerical simulation is presented to verify the feasibility and validity of the proposed 6-DOF combined control scheme.     

Single event upset investigations on the “Flying Laptop” satellite mission

The radiation effects in electronic parts are called single-event effects, which are deemed to be critical for space missions. This paper presents the Single Event Upsets that were observed in an onboard memory device of the Low Earth Orbit “Flying Laptop” satellite mission during its in-orbit operation. The Single Event Upsets were carefully mapped on the satellite orbital space itself and their root causes were investigated together with their rates of occurrence. Subsequently, the events were traced to show several root cause sources such as (i) trapped energetic protons leaking to low altitudes within the South Atlantic Anomaly, (ii) Solar Energetic Particles emitted by an impulsive event on 10 September 2017, and (iii) Galactic Cosmic Rays. A profound analysis was carried out on the observed flight data, and its corresponding results are actually in agreement with the standard energetic particle models. The presented results provide another important insight on the Single Event Upsets for future Low Earth Orbit satellite missions.     

集群无人机队形重构及虚拟仿真验证

队形重构是集群无人机（UAV）控制的重要问题，指无人机按照要求安全、无碰撞地从一个队形变换到另一个队形，其难点在于快速规划最优安全轨迹并控制无人机进行轨迹姿态的高精度跟踪。针对集群无人机队形重构的上述问题，首先，基于CAPT（Concurrent Assignment and Planning of Trajectories）算法，解决了多无人机的目标分配和轨迹生成的实时性问题，实现了集群无人机的最优安全路径规划；其次，提出一种有限时间多变量积分滑模连续控制算法，解决了无人机轨迹姿态的高精度跟踪问题，并通过MATLAB仿真验证了该控制算法的有效性；最后，为了更加真实直观地演示无人机三维仿真效果，建立了基于Gazebo-ROS的无人机仿真平台，实现了12架四旋翼无人机队形重构"建模-仿真-可视化"的一体化仿真演示，验证了上述路径规划算法和轨迹姿态控制算法的有效性。     

Charge-product control approach to electrostatic leader-follower formations in LEO plasma wakes

The feasibility of using electrostatic forces to stabilize a close-proximity leader-follower formation is investigated. The leader craft is equipped with a set of affixed spheres whose charge is modulated to hold the charged follower craft along a proscribed trajectory to its nominal leader-relative position. This charge structure and the follower craft are constrained to remain in the plasma wake generated behind all LEO craft because the more-dense ambient plasma outside the wake prevents object charging and electric field propagation. Once the formation is achieved, a controlled electric field is generated by the leader to counter relative accelerations from perturbations like differential drag and solar radiation pressure, holding the follow near its nominal position. Two controllers are derived for the system described, incorporating Coulomb accelerations and linearized gravity and drag accelerations. Simulations are run under unmodeled perturbations and sensor noise for different scenarios, demonstrating the challenges and benefits associated with electrostatic actuation.     

UMR: A utility-maximizing routing algorithm for delay-sensitive service in LEO satellite networks

This paper develops a routing algorithm for delay-sensitive packet transmission in a low earth orbit multi-hop satellite network consists of micro-satellites. The micro-satellite low earth orbit(MS-LEO) network endures unstable link connection and frequent link congestion due to the uneven user distribution and the link capacity variations. The proposed routing algorithm,referred to as the utility maximizing routing(UMR) algorithm, improve the network utility of the MS-LEO network for carrying flows with strict end-to-end delay bound requirement. In UMR, first, a link state parameter is defined to capture the link reliability on continuing to keep the end-to-end delay into constraint; then, on the basis of this parameter, a routing metric is formulated and a routing scheme is designed for balancing the reliability in delay bound guarantee among paths and building a path maximizing the network utility expectation. While the UMR algorithm has many advantages, it may result in a higher blocking rate of new calls. This phenomenon is discussed and a weight factor is introduced into UMR to provide a flexible performance option for network operator. A set of simulations are conducted to verify the good performance of UMR, in terms of balancing the traffic distribution on inter-satellite links, reducing the flow interruption rate,and improving the network utility.     

基于输出反馈的编队卫星姿态同步和跟踪控制

研究了卫星编队无角速度测量信息且采用局部信息交互时的姿态协同控制问题.以四元数为姿态描述手段,采用超前滤波方法重构星体绝对和相对角速度信息,设计了基于输出反馈的分散姿态同步和跟踪控制器.利用Barbalat引理和代数图论等对闭环系统的全局渐近稳定性进行了理论分析和证明.以六星编队为背景的数值仿真进一步验证了算法的有效性.     

基于对偶四元数的编队飞行卫星相对位姿描述及算法研究

针对编队飞行微小卫星,突破轨道姿态分而治之的传统模式,利用对偶四元数,提出了主从星间的相对位置和姿态统一描述方法,建立了对偶四元数卫星编队运动学模型。该方法区别于描述刚体纯旋转变换的四元数方法,将主从星的本体系之间坐标变换的旋转和平移过程进行融合、统一,并具有非常简洁的形式。同时,给出了求解模型的算法,解算出主从星间的相对位置和姿态。仿真结果表明该模型及算法科学合理,能够满足编队飞行的测控要求。     

Impact of covariance information of kinematic positions on orbit reconstruction and gravity field recovery

Gravity missions are equipped with onboard Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers for precise orbit determination (POD) and for the extraction of the long wavelength part of the Earth’s gravity field. As positions of low Earth orbiters (LEOs) may be determined from GPS measurements at each observation epoch by geometric means only, it is attractive to derive such kinematic positions in a first step and to use them in a second step as pseudo-observations for gravity field determination. The drawback of not directly using the original GPS measurements is, however, that kinematic positions are correlated due to the ambiguities in the GPS carrier phase observations, which in principle requires covariance information be taken into account. We use GRACE data to show that dynamic or reduced-dynamic orbit parameters are not optimally reconstructed from kinematic positions when only taking epoch-wise covariance information into account, but that essentially the same orbit quality can be achieved as when directly using the GPS measurements, if correlations in time are taken into account over sufficiently long intervals. For orbit reconstruction covariances have to be considered up to one revolution period to avoid ambiguity-induced variations of kinematic positions being erroneously interpreted as orbital variations. For gravity field recovery the advantage is, however, not very pronounced.     

原子氧和石墨在近地轨道环境中反应概率的数值估算

本文提出估算近地轨道环境中原子氧对高度规则材料的反应概率的分子动力学模型。该模型通过对所导出的随机微分方程组的数值求解估算出原子氧与材料表面相互作用的经典轨迹系统，并根据所提出的反应性与非反应性碰撞准则估算出相互作用的反应概率。作为算例，本文给出了原子戌石墨材料表面的反应概率数值计算并与航天飞机ＳＴＳ－４６所测出的实际反应概率进行了对比，表明所建立的模型在一定程度上中可靠的。