航天器大规模集群飞行的分布式协调控制方法研究

下一代包含几十、上百个航天器的大规模集群任务，如稀疏孔径观测、小行星带资源探测等，将极大提升人类探索和利用空间的能力。集群运动协调控制是这类任务实现的基础，其燃料消耗和燃料平衡性能制约了任务寿命。航天器大规模集群飞行，其协调控制问题规模庞大，且受航天器感知、通信和计算能力限制不能及时全局交互，使当前仅考虑少量航天器的编队飞行协调控制方法难以应用。本项目针对航天器大规模集群质心运动的关键协调控制问题，提出严格构形保持的虚拟弹簧阻尼网络方法，容许整体漂移而降低燃耗，按燃料余量调整控制力来实现燃料平衡；提出基于分布式连通性控制的集群松散伴飞维持方法，仅保留连通性这一最少约束来减少燃耗，在连接切换和维持中兼顾燃料平衡；提出基于多学科设计优化的集群最优机动分布式规划方法，能利用集群计算资源以较小通信开销分布式求解最优控制。研究将为航天器大规模集群飞行提供理论与方法基础，促进革命性集群空间任务的实现。

Space missions of the next generation using large swarm of dozens to hundreds of spacecrafts, such as the sparse aperture observation, and the resource exploration of the asteroid belt, etc., will greatly improve the human abilities of space exploration and exploitation. Coordinated control of swarm motion is the basis for the realization of these missions. The mission life time is bounded by the control performances of fuel consumption and fuel balance. For the coordinated control of large swarm of spacecrafts, size of the problems is huge, and timely global interactions can not be achieved confined by the abilities of sensing, communication and computation of spacecrafts. Thus, current coordinated control methods for formation flying considering only a small number of spacecrafts are difficult to apply. This research is focused on the key coordination control problems of the translational motion of swarm spacecrafts. First, a virtual spring-damper mesh method for rigorous formation keeping is proposed. Free drifting of the swarm as a whole is allowed to reduce fuel consumption. Control forces are adjusted according to the amount of the remaining fuel to achieve fuel balance. Second, a distributed connectivity control based method for loose collective motion maintenance is presented. Only the least constraint of connectivity is reserved to reduce fuel consumption. Fuel balance is considered in the switching and preserving of the links. Third, a distributed planning method for swarm optimal maneuvering based on multidisciplinary design optimization is proposed. Optimal control of swarm maneuvering can be solved distributedly using the computing resources of swarm spacecrafts with low communication cost. The research will provide a theoretical basis for the control of large swarm of spacecrafts, and promote the realization of revolutionary swarm space missions.