Vision Assisted Satellite Formation Control

This paper examines a complete solution to autonomous formation flying of satellites where problems of position, velocity and attitude estimation, data fusion across the cluster, constrained actuators, fuel efficient manoeuvres, actuator misalignment and robustness are all considered. The joint problem of inaccurate state estimation combined with low thrust is addressed through the use of a Kalman filter and an LP-solvable constrained predictive controller. Attitude control is ensured by a globally stable quaternion based adaptive feedback controller with calibrated control signals for translation and attitude manoeuvres