Cyclic pursuit control for fractionated spacecraft formation reconfiguration using local information only

This paper investigates the problem of decentralized coordination control in the context of fractionated spacecraft free flying that drawn inspiration from the cyclic pursuit research in the field of multi-agent systems. The mathematical background and formation flying preliminaries are firstly introduced. Then, the cyclic pursuit algorithms for single-integrator and double-integrator are presented, the stability of the controller is also analyzed. The cyclic pursuit control laws to form the circular and elliptical formation are put forward. Finally, the numerical simulations of fractionated spacecraft re-gathering, reconfiguration to a circular and elliptical formation are carried out. The simulation results indicate that the cyclic pursuit control is a very promising technique for fractionated spacecraft free flying, because it is leaderless, easy for implementation, and most important of all, it only requires the local information for control.