Bioinspired consensus-based spacecraft swarm control for autonomous capture of uncooperative targets

This work develops a novel two-phase control framework that enables a swarm of compact spacecraft (agents), such as CubeSats and Nanosats, to autonomously capture tumbling and uncooperative targets. By leveraging decentralized, bio-inspired swarm behavior control and distributed coordination strategies, the proposed system enables fully interchangeable agents to achieve robust, leaderless self-organization. During the capture, flocking behavior guides agents towards the target, while anti-flocking behavior enforces uniform dispersion of agents around it to provide full surface coverage and effective encapsulation prior to capture. A consensus-based protocol synchronizes the capture action among agents by allowing all agents to agree on a common action time. In this process, each agent autonomously identifies available capture points and participates in an auction-based allocation algorithm to collectively allocate optimal capture positions among agents. Simulation results validate the effectiveness of the proposed framework in autonomously capturing targets of various shapes, sizes and motion patterns, and demonstrate scalability across different swarm sizes. Overall, the proposed approach shows significant potential for coordinated, efficient, and robust swarm-based capture of uncooperative targets in space, offering benefits in scalability, adaptability, robustness, and cost-effectiveness. • Bio-inspired consensus-based spacecraft swarm control for on-orbit service • Flocking (to approach) and anti-flocking (to disperse) behaviors to guide a swarm • Leaderless agents in distributed and decentralized coordination for robust autonomy • Consensus-based synchronization for capture point allocation and simultaneous dock