Nonlinear receding horizon control-based real-time guidance, navigation, and control architecture for launch vehicles

Abstract

For almost as long as the Western world has had rockets and missiles, people have been interested in incorporating guidance systems into them [1], [2]. Robert Goddard experimented with rudimentary gyroscopic systems as early as the 1930s. Under the leadership of Wernher Von Braun and his team in the 1940s, V2 rockets used gyroscopes and an accelerometer, along with a simple analog computer, to help adjust their azimuth. Advancements continued to be made after World War II, including the development of guidance systems that adhered as closely as possible to a preplanned reference trajectory [1]-[3]. Expanding on this, studies (such as Launius and Jenkins [4]) provide a broader perspective into the history of the launch vehicle control problem. In his doctrine, Friedberg touches upon the history of U.S. launch vehicle missions [5], while Bilstein sheds light on the Apollo/Saturn launch vehicle program [6]. Such systems, and their offshoots, used differences in the actual velocity vector vs. the expected velocity vector, as well as vector cross products and partial derivatives, to determine what corrective guidance actions to take.