Formation Flying Control of a Pair of Nano-Satellites Based on Switching Predictive Control

This paper provides an implementable and energy efficient solution for the problem of manoeuver control of formations of nano-satellites subject to input-saturation constraints and persistent disturbances. The proposed control scheme is based on a supervisory switching logic which, at any time instant, select the most appropriate controller from a bank of pre-computed candidate predictive regulators. Each candidate controller is tuned for minimal energy control on to a different control horizon. The larger the control horizon, the smaller the energy of the required inputs. An example is provided for showing the effectiveness of the proposed approach.