Linear Parameter Varying Attitude Control For CubeSats Using Electrospray Thrusters

TL;DR

This paper develops a linear parameter-varying control approach for CubeSat attitude management using electro spray thrusters, addressing actuation saturation and maneuver variability through a mixed-sensitivity scheme.

Contribution

It introduces a novel LPV controller design tailored for electro spray thrusters, enhancing CubeSat attitude control robustness and performance across diverse maneuvers.

Findings

Controller effectively manages small control torques.

Robustness verified through simulation on a CubeSat testbed.

Performance meets specified maneuver requirements.

Abstract

This paper proposes the design of a single linear parameter-varying (LPV) controller for the attitude control of CubeSats using electro spray thrusters. CubeSat attitude control based on electro spray thrusters faces two main challenges. Firstly, the thruster can only generate a small control torque leading to easily saturating the actuation system. Secondly, CubeSats need to operate multiple different maneuvers from large to small slews to pointing tasks. LPV control is ideally suitable to address these challenges. The proposed design follows a mixed-sensitivity control scheme. The parameter-varying weights depend on the attitude error and are derived from the performance and robustness requirements of individual typical CubeSat maneuvers. The controller is synthesized by minimizing the induced L2-norm of the closed-loop interconnections between the controller and weighted plant. The performance and robustness of the controller is demonstrated on a simulation of the MIT Space Propulsion Lab's Magnetic Levitation CubeSat Testbed.