Certified Coil Geometry Learning for Short-Range Magnetic Actuation and Spacecraft Docking Application

TL;DR

This paper introduces a learning-based method to accurately and efficiently model magnetic interactions for spacecraft docking, providing certified error bounds and handling different coil geometries, validated through simulations and experiments.

Contribution

A novel learning framework that approximates exact magnetic fields with certified accuracy, reducing computational cost for spacecraft docking applications.

Findings

The method achieves high accuracy in magnetic field modeling.

It provides a certified error bound based on training data.

Experimental validation confirms effectiveness in docking scenarios.

Abstract

This paper presents a learning-based framework for approximating an exact magnetic-field interaction model, supported by both numerical and experimental validation. High-fidelity magnetic-field interaction modeling is essential for achieving exceptional accuracy and responsiveness across a wide range of fields, including transportation, energy systems, medicine, biomedical robotics, and aerospace robotics. In aerospace engineering, magnetic actuation has been investigated as a fuel-free solution for multi-satellite attitude and formation control. Although the exact magnetic field can be computed from the Biot-Savart law, the associated computational cost is prohibitive, and prior studies have therefore relied on dipole approximations to improve efficiency. However, these approximations lose accuracy during proximity operations, leading to unstable behavior and even collisions. To address this limitation, we develop a learning-based approximation framework that faithfully reproduces the exact field while dramatically reducing computational cost. This framework directly derives a coefficient matrix that maps inter-satellite current vectors to the resulting forces and torques, enabling efficient computation of control current commands. The proposed method additionally provides a certified error bound, derived from the number of training samples, ensuring reliable prediction accuracy. The learned model can also accommodate interactions between coils of different sizes through appropriate geometric transformations, without retraining. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed framework under challenging conditions, a spacecraft docking scenario is examined through both numerical simulations and experimental validation.