Distributed optimal control allocation for 6-dof spacecraft with redundant thrusters

Control allocation for 6-dof spacecraft maneuvers is considered. Retired spacecraft, whose own control system is inoperable, can be reused by installing multiple cellular thruster modules to provide thrusts for translational and rotational control. Such cellular thruster modules collaborate with their neighbors in a network topology to calculate an optimal distribution matrix for thrust allocation. A pseudo inverse optimal thrust allocation scheme is extended to a distributed iteration algorithm to enable this optimal problem to be solved by cellular thruster modules in a distributed manner. Subsequently, a norm-based distributed pseudo-inverse optimal thrust allocation scheme is developed to solve the same optimal thrust allocation problem. The syntheses of two distributed optimal thrust allocation schemes are discussed. Numerical simulations are demonstrated in the end to show the effectiveness of two proposed distributed thrust allocation schemes. Performance comparisons between two schemes are analyzed as well. (C) 2021 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.