15th IFAC Symposium

Automatic Control in Aerospace

(Bologna, Forli, Italy, September, 2001)

Stanislav Zemlyakov

Control Problems Institute of RAS

Profsoyuznaya, 65, Moscow, 117997, Russia

15th IFAC Symposium  on Automatic Control in Aerospace took place in Italy, Bologna/ Forli at September 2-7, 2001. The Symposium was organized and sponsored by International Federation on Automatic  Control –Technical Committee on Aerospace.

The great merit at the Symposium organization and conducting belongs to the Chairman of the International Program Committee and the National Organizing Committee prof. Gianni Bertoni (Italy). The Symposium was held at the University of Bologna that is situated in Bologna and airport of Forli.

The Symposium Welcome Ceremony took place at the Sala dello Zodiaco at the Palazzo della Provincia.  The plenary sessions were reserved for well known international speakers, who were invited to present a state of the field. The first plenary paper was made by well know Italian scientist A. Isidori “Internal-Model-Based Control of Nonlinear Systems”. The paper was devoted to the  problem of having the output of the system to asymptotically track prescribed trajectories and/or to asymptotically reject undesired disturbances, in the presence of possibly large model uncertainties. The paper reviewed the most recent advances in this area and outlined its potential interest in aero-space control.

The plenary paper of K. Schiling (Germany) “Space Robotics for Interplanetary Missions” concerned to advanced exploration missions to the other planets of our solar system. The conversation was about the control aspects of the specific European interplanetary missions like HUYGENS (part of Cassini) to Saturn / Titan, ROSETTA to a comet and also planetary rovers for surface exploration.

Richard van Holtz (ESA) presented the plenary paper “Operations Control Processes for the Galileo Satellite Navigation Services”.

The very interesting plenary paper was presented by Mark T. Balas (USA) “Adaptive Control of Aerospace structure with Persistent Disturbances”. The author made the review recent work in direct adaptive control and disturbance cancellation with application to precision optical structures.

At the Symposium the special some sessions were organized at Forli Campus.

As the special plenary paper at that sessions prof. Gianni Bertoni presented the paper “Presentation of Forli Laboratory on Satellite-based Navigation”.

At the plenary paper “Methods and Soft Ware for Research and Design of Spacecraft Robust Fault Tolerant Control Systems” Y. Somov (Russia) made brief analytic overview on advanced method for the fault detection, isolation, diagnosis and onboard reconfiguration.

Y. Bar-Shalon (USA) presented the plenary paper “Tracking and Surveillance Systems”. The conversation was about the evolution of the technology of tracking objects of interest (targets) in a cluttered environment using remote sensors. Applications were presented from Air Traffic Control (data fusion from 5 FAA radars for 800 targets) and underwater surveillance for a LO target.

At the Symposium there were organized 9 sessions of special interests.

On the Session 1 “Spacecraft Attitude Control and Space Robotics” some interesting papers were presented. The attention was displayed  to the papers of S.D. Zemlyakov, V.M. Glumov (Russia) “Autonomous Predicted Control of Spacecraft with Changing Configuration” and V.Yu. Rutkovsky, V.M. Sukhanov  “Some Questions of Safety and Efficiency Control of a Space Robotic Module’s Flight Near by a Space Station”. At the both papers the conversation was about a special free-flying space robotic module during its flight near by a Space Station.

The paper of M.M. Quottrup, R. Wisniewski, T. Krogh-Sorensen (Denmark) “Passivity Based Nonlinear Attitude Control of the Romer Satellite” was devoted to the Danish Romer satellite. A novel momentum distribution algorithm for reaction wheels was proposed.

On the Session 2  “Theory and Applications on Guidance, Navigation and Control of Aerospace Vehicles” the paper by L.K. Kuzmina (Russia) “Stability Theory Methods in Girostabilization Systems Dynamics” could be specially marked. The paper was devoted  to the specific problems of the mathematical modeling for the systems of stabilization and orientation with gyroscopic controlling elements. At the paper on the base of Lyapunov’s  method it was proposed the special reduction principle, solving the decomposition problem for such systems.

On the Session 4 “Satellite Navigation Systems, GRS / GLONASS Applications”  the paper of M.Crisci, L.Daga, A. Mirri, S. Mazzoni (Italy) “A Virtual Laboratory on Satellite-Based Navigation” could be marked. The Virtual Laboratory has been developed on the faculty of Engineering of the Bologna University to simulate the on board avionics of a general aviation aircraft. At the paper the authors described details about the configuration and architecture of this laboratory.

The great interest at the  Symposium was displayed to invited Session 8 “Advances in Missile Guidance and Control Systems”. Especially two papers of A. Tsourdos, B.A.White “Modern Missile Flight Control design: an Overview” and “Modern Missile Guidance design: an Overview” “ attracted the audience’s attention for a long time.

I could like to add that prof. Gianni Bertoni as the Chairman of National Organizing Committee and Alba de Giovanni  as the Secretary of the Committee were able to create so cordial situation that every participant of the  Symposium had the feeling that just he or she was a main person of  the  Symposium.

Once more moment: preprints of full papers of the  Symposium were perfectly printed. At the Symposium there were more than 10 participants from Russia. So preprints of the Symposium are enough accessible. For information: L.K.Kuzmina (Lyudmila.Kuzmina@ksu.ru Kazan, Russia), Y.Somov (pnms@sstu.samara.ru Samara, Russia), Nebylov (nebylov@aanet.ru Saint-Petersburg, Russia), S.D.Zemlyakov (zeml@ipu.rssi.ru Moscow, Russia).