Decentralized coordinated attitude control within a formation of spacecraft

The problem of controlling the attitude of spacecraft within a formation is investigated. A class of decentralized coordinated attitude control laws using behavior-based control is developed. The decentralized coordinated attitude control laws that comprise the class differ by the coordination architecture used by the spacecraft formation. The choice of behavior weights defines the coordination architecture. A corollary of Barbalat's Lemma is used to prove that the class of control laws globally asymptotically stabilizes the spacecraft formation. Convergence of the system is shown to be a consequence of the closed-loop equations of motion. Numeric simulation is used to reinforce the analytic results, and to briefly investigate the effect of coordination architecture on performance.