Decentralised spacecraft manoeuvre planning

Abstract

Purpose – This paper aims to investigate the decentralised strategy to coordinate the reconfiguration of multiple spacecraft. Design/methodology/approach – The system of interest consists of multiple spacecraft with independent subsystem dynamics and local constraints, but is linked through their coupling constraints. The proposed method decomposes the centralised problem into smaller subproblems. It minimises the fuel consumption of multiple spacecraft performing a reconfiguration manoeuvre through an iterative computation. In particular, each agent optimises its individual cost function using the most recently available local solution for the other agents. Findings – The simulation scenarios include spacecraft formation reconfiguration and close manoeuvres around obstacles were conducted. The simulation results showed the fast convergence of the proposed algorithm, while local and inter-vehicle constraints were maintained. Originality/value – The main advantage of this approach is that it adopts a linea...