A survey of spacecraft formation flying guidance and control. Part II: control

TLDR

Formation flying involves multiple spacecraft whose states are coupled by a shared control law. The paper surveys spacecraft formation flying control, covering design techniques and stability results for coupled‑state control laws. The survey categorizes FFC literature into five architectures—MIMO, leader/follower, virtual structure, cyclic, and behavioral—while also reviewing historical developments and connections to other multi‑vehicle control domains. The survey expands on Lawton’s earlier overview by adding MIMO, cyclic, and additional formation flying control literature.

Abstract

Formation flying is defined as a set of more than one spacecraft whose states are coupled through a common control law. This paper provides a comprehensive survey of spacecraft formation flying control (FFC), which encompasses design techniques and stability results for these coupled-state control laws. We divide the FFC literature into five FFC architectures: (i) multiple-input multiple-output, in which the formation is treated as a single multiple-input, multiple-output plant, (ii) leader/follower, in which individual spacecraft controllers are connected hierarchically, (iii) virtual structure, in which spacecraft are treated as rigid bodies embedded in an overall virtual rigid body, (iv) cyclic, in which individual spacecraft controllers are connected non-hierarchically, and (v) behavioral, in which multiple controllers for achieving different (and possibly competing) objectives are combined. This survey significantly extends an overview of the FFC literature provided by Lawton, which discussed the L/F, virtual structure and behavioral architectures. We also include a brief history of the formation flying literature, and discuss connections between spacecraft FFC and other multi-vehicle control problems in the robotics and automated highway system literatures.