AAS 95-446

Distributed Control for On-Orbit Assembly

F. McQuade and C. R. McInnes, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, Scotland UK

Abstract

Studies for large scale orbital platforms are now beyond the capacity of current large launch vehicles. A solution then is to assemble prefabricated elements in orbit. The infrastructure required to perform such a task using human labor is expensive in terms of both mass and cost. An alternative is the use of autonomous maneuvering vehicles, employing a subsumption control architecture. This paper examines the control aspects of such vehicles assembling extended rigid bodies on-orbit. The distributed control system is based upon Lyapunov's theorem layer upon a Clohessy-Wiltshire model of the system orbital dynamics.