Control of Multivehicle Aerospace Systems

Aircraft and spacecraft have been perhaps the most visible and awe-inspiring applications for control technology. The continuing march toward, and achievement of, ever higher performance in flight control have seemed inexorable and a perpetual source of problems as challenging as any that controls researchers could wish for. Yet, while difficult problems in vehicle flight control remain outstanding, it is fair to say that algorithmic research in this area has encountered the law of diminishing returns. As discussed in Chapter 11, substantial challenges remain in single-vehicle control, related to the cost-effective development and deployment of controllers rather than new algorithms and theories. That aerospace control remains a vigorous, exciting field from algorithmic and theoretical perspectives as well can be attributed in large part to a broad new research direction: the control of multivehicle systems. This chapter discusses three different and important multivehicle aerospace challenges. The first is in commercial aviation, where government and industry are seeking radical alternatives to today's air traffic control technology. Concepts such as ?>free flight ?> promise substantial improvements in safety and operational efficiency???-???under the proviso that the enabling control technology is available. The second example presented is formation flying for uninhabited combat air vehicles (DCAVs), with fleet coordination and autonomy requiring new fundamental research. Finally, the control of satellite clusters is discussed. This application is motivated by the cost and failure rates of large monolithic satellites and by the additional capabilities, such as synthetic aperture radar, that can be achieved by precise positioning of spatially distributed satellites. Multivehicle systems are now a topic of general interest in control and automation; the interest is not limited to aerospace. Chapter 14 notes applications to road vehicles, including platooning automobiles.