Hardware implementation of Model Predictive Control for relative motion maneuvering

In this paper, a Model Predictive Controller (MPC) is experimentally implemented on a robotic test-bed. The test-bed is designed to emulate spacecraft relative motion maneuvers and reflects realistic computational hardware limitations (i.e., limited on-board computational power and memory), which present serious obstacles to implementation of advanced guidance and control algorithms. Both simulation results and experimental results are presented and compared, demonstrating that autonomous constrained maneuvering using MPC is feasible for on-board implementation.