Workshop “Modern Methods of Navigation and Motion Control”

Abstract

A regular workshop “Modern Methods of Navigation and Motion Control” took place on March 31, 2011 at the Trapeznikov Institute of Control Sciences, Russian Academy of Sciences. It was held there for the sixth time. For information on the background and topics of the workshops the readers are referred to [1, 2]. The workshop of 2011 had thematical subtitle “State-of-the-Art and Outlooks.” Traditionally, the workshop had two—morning and afternoon—sessions attended by more than 200 persons. Nine lectures were presented. The workshop was opened by the Director of IPU RAN Academician S.N. Vassilyev who noted the topicality of the lectures selected for the workshop and wished the participants a fruitful day. The morning session was chaired by Academician E.A. Fedosov, head of the Branch of Power Engineering, Machine Building, Mechanics, and Control Processes, Russian Academy of Sciences, who delivered the first lecture on “Integral-Modular Systems of the Modern Civil Avionics.” He discussed in detail the main stages of the development of avionics (electronics for aviation) since the mid-1900s until today. The analog connections were used till the 1970s to support interaction of various devices and sensors. With the advent of the computer in the 1970s some of the pilot’s functions such as determination of the route were put on it. At the 1980s, the hybrid avionic architecture made its appearance, displays (first CRTs and later LCD’s) emerged, and gradually the digital communication showed up. Most importantly, at that period the international avionic standards came into play. At the 1990s the entire international aircraft building switches completely to the distributed (federative) digital architecture of avionics. Each function such as control in the longitudinal and vertical planes, calculation of the fuel consumption, and so on has its own calculator. The computer became pivotal to aircraft control. The centralized integral modular architecture (IMA) established in the 2000s. This philosophy of avionics was claimed by the continued build-up of the on-board functions. The lecturer dwelt on the qualitative characteristics of the equipment development in the USA and EU and presented the up-to-date concept, principles of organization, and mechanisms for IMA reconfiguration. The lecturer reviewed the existing Russian designs in this field. Much attention was paid to the technology of development of the functional software, and the instrumental facilities for development and integration of the on-board equipment were reviewed. Importance of the development prototyping was noted. The lecture was completed by presenting the main stages of IMA development. The second lecture of the morning session was that of G.P. Anshakov (FGUP “GNP RKTS “TSSKB-Progress”) and E.I. Somov (SamNTs RAN) “Gyroforce Guidance and Control of Orientation of the Observation Satellites: Methods, Results, and New Challenges.” It was presented by Somov who specified the observation spacecraft in the class of the information satellites, gave their brief classification, set forth the main problems of guidance, navigation, motion control, and processing of the acquired observation information. The methods and results of the design of the laws of guidance of the spacecraft useful payload (telescopes, antennas) by means of the force gyro-