Satellite Formation-Containment Flying Control with Collision Avoidance

This paper investigates the satellite formation-containment flying control problem to handle a scenario where a group of satellite effectively completes deep-space exploration. In such a scenario, the satellite can be divided into two categories, i.e., leader satellite with advanced sensors and follower satellite with general sensors. To make sure all leader satellite keep a desired relative configuration and fly with a constant velocity simultaneously, a cooperative formation control algorithm is proposed for each leader satellite. Then, to actuate all follower satellite converge into the convex hull spanned by the leader satellite for safety or navigation considerations, a distributed containment control algorithm is proposed for each follower satellite. One major contribution of the proposed algorithms lies in its collision-avoidance capacity among all satellite by equipping a close-range omnidirectional relative distance sensor and employing the potential functions methodology. Finally, simulation results are provided to verify the formation containment performance as well as the collision-avoidance performance of the proposed control algorithms.