Formation Control for Multiple Spacecraft in Presence of Sensor Failure: An Integrated Estimation and Control Approach

Although the formation control of multiple space-craft has been widely studied from various aspects, the problem is still not well resolved, especially when facing sensor failure in some spacecraft. This paper presents an integrated design method for distributed observers and controllers to realize formation control of multiple spacecraft in the presence of sensor failures. By viewing the group of spacecraft as an entire system and utilizing the sensor measurement of other spacecraft, the distributed observer to estimate the entire system is designed for each spacecraft based on the controller prediction of all spacecraft, and meanwhile the local controller is proposed based on the distributed observer. Theoretical analysis and simulation result show the effectiveness of the proposed integrated method.