Structural analogy for control of satellite formations

The application of the structural analogy to the control of a formation of satellites is discussed and a novel control system architecture is presented. The main contribution of the paper is the integration of two techniques for control of systems of multiple agents/vehicles, namely, the formation feedback control and the node augmentation technique. Development of the latter technique is carried out to generate maneuvers in a three-dimensional space. Performance of the proposed control algorithm is demonstrated by numerical simulations of the closed-loop system. A figure of merit that quantifies the deformation of the formation graph is defined in order to compare the results with those obtained with an existing, single-level control algorithm.