Hindawi Publishing Corporation
International Journal of Aerospace Engineering
Volume 2011, Article ID 798981, 2 pages
doi:10.1155/2011/798981
Editorial
Formation Flight Control
Yu Gu,1 Giampiero Campa,2 and Mario Innocenti3
1 Department
of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV 26506, USA
Mathworks, El Segundo, CA 90245, USA
3 Department of Electrical Systems and Automation, University of Pisa, 56126 Pisa, Italy
2 The
Correspondence should be addressed to Yu Gu, yu.gu@mail.wvu.edu
Received 27 June 2011; Accepted 27 June 2011
Copyright © 2011 Yu Gu et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which
permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
The formation flight control problem has been extensively
discussed in recent years with numerous applications on
aircraft and spacecraft systems. For aerial vehicles, advantages of performing formation flight have been well documented, including fuel saving, improved efficiency in air
traffic control, and cooperative task allocation. For space
vehicles, precise control of formation flight will enable
future large-aperture space telescopes, variable baseline space
interferometers, autonomous rendezvous and docking, and
robotic assembly of space structures.
To facilitate further development in this emerging area of
research, this special issue includes several papers discussing
the most recent developments and ideas in the field, with
emphasis on both the theoretical and experimental results.
Of the five papers selected, three are in the area of spacecraft
formation flight control and two are related to autonomous
aerial vehicles. Contents of these papers include modeling
and estimation, guidance, navigation, and control (GNC),
and experimental techniques related to autonomous formation flight.
The first paper of this special issue “Guidance navigation
and control for autonomous multiple spacecraft assembly:
analysis and experimentation” explores the GNC problem
for the in-plane orbital assembly of autonomous multiple
spacecraft. The guidance and control strategies are designed
to take into account the evolving shape and mass properties
of the assembling spacecraft. The proposed approaches
were validated via hardware-in-the-loop experiments, using
four autonomous 3-degree-of-freedom robotic spacecraft
simulators.
The second paper “Cascades-based controlled attitude
synchronization and tracking of spacecraft in leader-follower
formation” presents control strategies for leader-follower
attitude synchronization of spacecraft formations in the
presence of disturbances. In a leader-follower formation
configuration, the leader spacecraft is controlled to follow a
given reference, while a follower spacecraft is controlled to
synchronize its motion with the leader. A stability analysis
is provided in the paper for both known and unknown but
bounded disturbances.
The third paper “Design of an extended interacting
multiple models adaptive estimator (EIMMAE) for attitude
determination of a stereo-imagery satellite” deals with the
attitude determination issue for a pair of satellites used
in a stereoimaging scenario. For this type of operations,
highly accurate and stable pointing maneuvers are needed
to be accomplished in a few seconds, which requires the
satellites to rotate along a relatively large-angle attitude
very quickly. Therefore, different estimation strategies are
discussed for two different modes: “maneuvering motion”
mode and “uniform motion” mode.
The fourth paper “Decentralized model predictive control
for cooperative multiple vehicles subject to communication loss”
investigates the control of multiple cooperative vehicles with
the possibility of communication loss/delay. Such communication issues could lead to poor cooperation performance
and unsafe behaviors such as collisions. A decentralized
model predictive control (DMPC) architecture is proposed
to estimate the tail of neighbor’s trajectory which is not
available due to the large communication delays. The concept
of the tube MPC is also employed to improve the safety of the
fleet against collisions, in the presence of large intervehicle
communication delays.
The final paper of this special issue “Vision-based tracking of uncooperative targets” presents both the flight test
and simulation results of a follower aircraft tracking an
2
International Journal of Aerospace Engineering
uncooperative leader, using only monocular vision information. The situations with and without the subtended angle
information for range estimation are both discussed with
different approaches presented.
Yu Gu
Giampiero Campa
Mario Innocenti
International Journal of
Rotating
Machinery
Engineering
Journal of
Hindawi Publishing Corporation
http://www.hindawi.com
Volume 2014
The Scientific
World Journal
Hindawi Publishing Corporation
http://www.hindawi.com
Volume 2014
International Journal of
Distributed
Sensor Networks
Journal of
Sensors
Hindawi Publishing Corporation
http://www.hindawi.com
Volume 2014
Hindawi Publishing Corporation
http://www.hindawi.com
Volume 2014
Hindawi Publishing Corporation
http://www.hindawi.com
Volume 2014
Journal of
Control Science
and Engineering
Advances in
Civil Engineering
Hindawi Publishing Corporation
http://www.hindawi.com
Hindawi Publishing Corporation
http://www.hindawi.com
Volume 2014
Volume 2014
Submit your manuscripts at
http://www.hindawi.com
Journal of
Electrical and Computer
Engineering
Journal of
Robotics
Hindawi Publishing Corporation
http://www.hindawi.com
Hindawi Publishing Corporation
http://www.hindawi.com
Volume 2014
Volume 2014
VLSI Design
Advances in
OptoElectronics
International Journal of
Navigation and
Observation
Hindawi Publishing Corporation
http://www.hindawi.com
Volume 2014
Hindawi Publishing Corporation
http://www.hindawi.com
Hindawi Publishing Corporation
http://www.hindawi.com
Chemical Engineering
Hindawi Publishing Corporation
http://www.hindawi.com
Volume 2014
Volume 2014
Active and Passive
Electronic Components
Antennas and
Propagation
Hindawi Publishing Corporation
http://www.hindawi.com
Aerospace
Engineering
Hindawi Publishing Corporation
http://www.hindawi.com
Volume 2014
Hindawi Publishing Corporation
http://www.hindawi.com
Volume 2010
Volume 2014
International Journal of
International Journal of
International Journal of
Modelling &
Simulation
in Engineering
Volume 2014
Hindawi Publishing Corporation
http://www.hindawi.com
Volume 2014
Shock and Vibration
Hindawi Publishing Corporation
http://www.hindawi.com
Volume 2014
Advances in
Acoustics and Vibration
Hindawi Publishing Corporation
http://www.hindawi.com
Volume 2014