Self-Organizing and Scalable Shape Formation for a Swarm of Pico Satellites

Elio Tuci, Thamas Vinko, Marco Del Rey Zapatero, Mauro Birattari, Dario Izzo, Carlo Pinciroli, Marco Dorigo

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference Proceeding (Non-Journal item)

33 Citations (Scopus)
231 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

We present a scalable and distributed control strategy for swarms of satellites to autonomously form an hexagonal lattice in space around a predefined meeting point. The control strategy is modeled as an artificial potential field. Such potential field is split in two main terms: a local potential is used to form locally hexagonal lattices based on the well known Lennard- Jones potential, and a global potential used to join the lattices into a single one. The control strategy uses only simple local information about few neighbouring satellites and assumes that each satellite can estimate its position with respect to the meeting point. Experiments show the results of the method with up to 500 satellites. The proposed method is general and can be adapted to build different kinds of lattices and shapes.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationNASA/ESA Conference on Adaptive Hardware and Systems, 2008. AHS '08
PublisherIEEE Press
Pages57-61
Number of pages5
ISBN (Print)978-0-7695-3166-3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 22 Jun 2008
EventNASA/ESA Conference on Adaptive Hardware and Systems, 2008. AHS '08 - Noordwijk, Netherlands
Duration: 22 Jun 200825 Jun 2008

Conference

ConferenceNASA/ESA Conference on Adaptive Hardware and Systems, 2008. AHS '08
Country/TerritoryNetherlands
CityNoordwijk
Period22 Jun 200825 Jun 2008

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