Autonomous Constrained Control for Arbitrary Configurations of Gimbaling Thrusters in SE(3)
In order to develop robust autonomy in spacecraft, it is desirable to develop methods for controlling a spacecraft in various configurations with any combination of thrusters of various types and both for static RCS thrusters and gimbaling thrusters. In the case of a stuck thruster imposing unplanned and undesired motion both translational and rotational or in the case of a malfunctioning thruster, it is desirable for that spacecraft to have the ability to identify and overcome that problem without human intervention. To that end, a spacecraft must be able to rapidly and autonomously reconfigure thruster firing histories and update guidance protocols. In this paper, a method for a spacecraft to autonomously select thrusters of any configuration is presented. The residual motion imposed by off-nominal or not-fully-controllable thruster configurations is identified by the spacecraft and solved for, both for static reaction control systems and gimbaling engines.