16^th IFAC Symposium on automatic control in aerospace

(Russia, Saint-Petersburg, June, 2004)

S.D.Zemlyakov

V.A. Trapeznikov Institute of Control Sciences of RAS

Profsoyuznaya, 65, Moscow, 117997, Russia

zeml@ipu.ru

16-th IFAC Symposium on Automatic Control in Aerospace was held at Saint-Petersburg (Russia) on June 14-18, 2004. The Symposium was organized and sponsored by International Federation on Automatic Control - Technical Committee on Aerospace, co-sponsored by ESA (European Space Agency), IFAC TC on Computers and Telematics, supported by Russian IFAC NMO, Russian Ministry of Science and Technologies, Russian Foundation "Integration", St. Petersburg City Government, Academy of Navigation and Motion Control, CSRI "Electropribor", Reshetnev's RPA of Applied Mechanics,љ Nauchtehlitizdat Ltd.

The Symposium's Co-organizer was Central Scientific and Research Institute "Electropribor".

The great merit at the Symposium organization and conducting belongs to the Chairman of the International Program Committee V.G. Peshekhonov (Russia) and to the Chairman of the National Organizing Committee A. Nebylov (Russia).

The main Symposium venue was held at the Grand Duke Vladimir Palace (House of Scientists) that is situated at the Dvortsovaya Embank and some sessions were held at the Central Scientific and Research Institute "Electropribor".

The plenary sessions were reserved for well known international speakers who were invited to present a state of the art overview of the main topics in the field.

The first plenary lecture "Russian Space Programs: Achievements and Prospects of Automatic Control Applications" was made by the well known Russian scientist and space specialist V.P.Legostaev. The author claims that the performance of manned and automated spacecraft and vehicles greatly relies on the control system operation quality. The paper describes the history and evolution of control systems, principles of their development, and the latest concepts. A 60-year experience gained from the development and operation of control systems enabled to define certain philosophy and trends in developing systems to handle both program and crew safety assurance. The author begins from the pulse-relay systems for Spacecraft Luna-3, Vostok and Voshod and step-by-step approach to non-propulsion systems, to the momentum gyro stabilization in combination with the gravitational and magnetic desaturation.

The plenary lecture of P. Silvestrin (ESA Mission and System Studies Section for Earth Observation Future Programs, The Netherlands) "On-Board Control and Navigation System Advances for the New ESA Earth Observation Missions" was devoted to several new missions that are under development or preparation within ESA's Earth observation programme. In 2005-2008 the following satellites will be launched: Cryostat (Ice Altimetry); SMOS (Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity); ADM-Aeolus (Atmospheric Dynamics).

Other projects under study include: Earth CARE (Earth Cloud, Aerosol and Radiation Explorer); Spectra (Surface Processes and Ecosystem Changes through Response Analysis); WALES (Water Vapour and Lidar Experiment in Space); ACE+ (Atmosphere and Climate Explorer); EGPM, the Europlan contribution to the Global Precipitation Mission; Swarm, the study the dynamics of the magnetic field. Relevant initiatives are presented, especially for sensor technologies, such as autonomous star-trackers and precise GPS/Galileo systems.

The plenary lecture of Y. Miyazawa (The Institute of Space Technology and Aeronautics, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Tokyo, Japan) "Current Status of Japanese Aerospace Programs - Focusing on the High Speed Flight Demonstration" concerned to an overview of the current status of Japanese aerospace programs, including launch vehicles, satellites, University space programs, and aeronautical research and development. The paper describes the High Speed Flight Demonstration program, a flight experiment program using sub-scale vehicles to investigate the re-entry terminal flight phase of re-usable space vehicles. The program is a joint one between NAL/NASDA and CNES (NAL - National Aerospace Laboratory of Japan; NASDA - National Space Development Agency of Japan; CNES - Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales of France).

On the base of the overview the author states that the area of guidance, navigation and control plays a key role in research and development. This is in common with the efforts of other aerospace industries as a result of today's revolution in information technology. High performance avionics, digital data communication, digital computers, and software technology have advanced aerospace automatic control capabilities. Automatic flight control technology is now allowing the expansion of the boundaries of flight capability in much the same way as it was explored by human test pilots in the past.

A.B. Kurzhanski (Moscow State (Lomonosov) University, Russia) and V.F. Krotov (V.A. Trapeznikov Institute of Control Sciences RAS, Russia) in their plenary lecture "National Achievements in Control Theory: the Aerospace Perspective" presented the main points of the control theory that had influenced on aviation and space developments. It is well known that among the first motivations for modern control theory were optimal control problems in rocket launching and navigation in aerospace. These problems had become especially important in the forties and fifties due to necessity to minimize various costly resources, such as flight time, amount (mass) of fuel etc. Such investigations had good historical precursors in the earlier works of A.M. Lyapunov and the activities in dynamic systems theory of the thirties.

The authors illuminated roles of russian scientists in developing of the control theory for aviation and space tasks. They were speaking about great roles of D.E. Ochotsimsky, I.V. Ostoslavsky, A.A. Lebedev, A.A. Feldbaum, L.S. Pontryagin, N.N. Krasovski, F.L. Chernousko and many other russian scientists. Speaking about concrete famous scientist authors demonstrated his photo. The audience accepted it very warmth because everybody had known such the famous name but it was very interesting to see the well known person.

The plenary lecture of R. Iserman (Institute of Automatic Control, University of Technology at Darmstadt, Germany) "Model-Based Fault Detection and Diagnosis - Status and Applications" was devoted to the questions of reliability, safety and efficiency for many technical process with objects such as aircrafts, trains, automobils, power plants and chemical plants. The classical approaches are limit or trend checking of some mesurable output variables. Model - based methods of fault detection were developed by using input and output signals and applying dynamic process models. These methods are based on parameter estimation, parity equatins or state observers. The goal is to generate several symptoms indicating the difference between nominal and faulty status. The paper gives a short introduction into the field and shows some applications for an actuator, a passenger car and a combustion engine.

At the Symposium's schedule the once more plenary lecture was planned. It had to be the lecture of R.L. Sackheim (NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, USA) "The U. S. Vision for Space Exploration". But unfortunately this lecture was not take place.

In the whole the Symposium gathered about 300 participants from 25 countries. 5 Plenary lectures mentionned above were presented. During the Symposium 15 Sessions were functioned where 197 papers were presented.

The Symposium was excellently organized and well conducted by the Chairman of National Organizing Committee A.B. Nebylov.

To the beginning of the Symposium two volumes of preprints were well published. The first one (582 p.p.) includes 6 plenary lectures and 88 contributed papers from the regular sessions 2-6. Volume 2 (597 p.p.) takes in 102 contributed papers from the regular sessions 7-9 and spesial sessions 10-15. The final version of all presented papers will be published in the Symposium Proceedings.

Session 2. Spacecraft Attitude and Orbit Control. Chairs - E. Gottzein (Germany) and L. Giulicchi (The Netherlands); 23 papers.

The attention called on the paper "On the precision Attitude Control Problems" by V. Branets, V. Platonov (RSC-Energia, Korolyov, Moscow region, Russia), A. Mezentsev (The NII PM Research Institute, Moscow, Russia) and G. Avanesov (The IKI Research Institute Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow) that was presented by V. Branets. This paper developed more detailed some points of the plenary lecture that was made by V. Legostaev. Precise attitude of space vehicles is one of the most complicated present-day problems associated with control function in the space. Application of the precise sensors in the strapped-down inertial systems (SINS) together with the star sensors implemented on the base of CCD-matrices, as well as in momentum gyroscopes, provides prerequisites for resolving this task. The paper represents data for precise attitude systems of the Mir station (1986-2001) astrophysical module (1990-1992) and the Yamal communication satellites (1999,2003), developed by RSC-Energia. Modern instruments provide implementation of precise attitude modes within the limits of several angular minutes by angle and ≈10^-4 degree/sec by angular rate, even for rather large space vehicles.

An interesting information was presented in the paper of N. Yoshida, O. Takahara (Aduanced Technology R&Center, Mitsubishi Corp., Japan), T. Kosugi, K. Ninomiya, T. Hashimoto, K. Minesugi (Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency), S. Tsuneta, K. Ishimoto (National Astronomical Observatory of Japan) and S. Shimada (Kamakura Works, Mitsubishi Electric Corp., Japan) "Systematic Approach to Achieve Fine Pointing Requirement of SOLAR-B".

SOLAR-B is a scientific satellite that observes solar activity simultaneously in the visible, ultraviolet and X-ray regions. Its mission is to understand physical processes occurring in the solar atmosphere. The satellite is under development by the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan. The launch is currently scheduled in summer 2006. The mass of the whole spacecraft is approximately 900 kg including 130 kg of fuel, and the size is about 3.8 m in height and 10 m in span. The satellite will be put into a sun-synchronous twilight orbit with the altitude of 630-720 km and the inclonation of 97.76-97.88њ. It is required very stable pointing of the telescopes. For example, the pointing stability better than 0.09 arc sec (3s) for 10 seconds is required for the Solar Optical Telescope.

Some papers presented in the section 2 were dedicated to a very actual problem: mini-satellites and micro-satellites. For example the paper of S.N. Konyukhov, V.Y. Dranovesky, Yu. D. Saltykov, V.S. Horoshilov, A.G. Melanchenko (State Design Office "Yuznoye", Ukraine), Y.M. Zlatkin (Scientific Manufacturing Company "Hartron-ARKOS", Ukraine), N.I. Kudin, N.V. Yetimenko, Ya.I. Dubyna (Scientific Manufactoring Company "Hartron-CONSAT", Ukraine) "Control System of the Microsatellite "MICRON"; the paper of F. Terui, K. Yoshihara, T. Yamamoto (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency), S. Kimura, Y. Ngai, H. Yamamoto (National Institute of Information and Communications Technology, Japan), S. Nakasuka (University of Tokyo, Japan) "Visual Feedback Attitude Control Experiment of a Bias Momentum Micro Satellite"; the paper of T. Yamamoto and K. Yoshihara (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) "On-Orbit Operation and Performance of Micro Labsat Attitude Control Subsystem"; the paper of E. Somov, S. Butyrin (Research Institute of Mechanical Systems Reliability, Samara, Russia), G. Titov, V. Rayevsky, A. Kozlov (Reshetnev Federal State Nauchno-Proizvodstvennoe Obiedinenie Prikladnoy Mekhaniki, Zheleznogorsk, Russia) "Nonlinear Dynamics of a Spacecraft Respinup by a Weak Internal Control".

The session 2 was interesting by the information about concrete spacecrafts, concrete constructive and accuracy data, but not only. For example the paper of J.R. Zhang and J.F. Li (Tsinghua University, Beijing, China) "A Lyapunov-Typed Nonlinear Attitude Control for Spacecraft" deals with the nonlinear controller design for attitude control system of a spacecraft without the assumption of the small angles to the product items. Since neither the linearization nor the decoupling has been used to simplify the model, the control result could be more precise. A simulation result illustrates the validity of the controller.

Session 3. Autonomous Control, Mission Control and Operations. Chairs - W. Wimmer (Germany) and J.G.Lee (Korea); 22 papers.

The paper of K. Ninomiya (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) "Overview of Recent Control Technology for Japanese Scientific Space Missions" was devoted as it is clear from the paper's title to the status of control technology for Japanese scientific spacecraft by referring to the recent and near-term interplanetary, lunar and astronomy robotic missions.

The same goal pursued the paper of Y. Ohkami and S. Taniwaki (Keio University, Yokohama, Japan) "Overview of the Attitude and Orbit Control Systems (AOCS) Developed for NASDA (JAXA Engineering Test and Applications Satellites". The paper presents an overview of the AOCS developed by NASDA (National Space Development Agency, now Jaxa - Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) and supporting manufactures for more than 20 years.

Session 4. Space Robotics and Manipulators. Chairs - K.Schilling (Germany) and C.Melchiorri (Italy); 9 papers.

The paper of L.Biagiotti, F.Lotti, C.Melchiorri and G.Vassura (University of Bologna, Italy) "New Directions on Robotic Hands Design for Space Applications" was devoted to some possible solutions for the design of robotic hands/grippers for space manipulation. In the paper an overview about the design activity of robotic end-effectors for space at University of Bologna was given.

An interesting paper "ROKVISS - Space Robotics Dynamics and Control Performance Experiments at the ISS" of B.Schafer, B.Rebele and K.Landzettel (German Aerospace Center (DLR)) was presented by B.Schafer. To guarantee for mission success, already during the design phase, confidence in the robotic dynamics and control models has to be ensured. For validation purposes it is necessary to have in-orbit testbeds. An ISS-based two-joint robotic configuration experiment, ROKVISS, is presented.

Session 5. Guidance and Control Theory and Analysis. Chairs: A.Bukley (Germany), A.Kurzhanski (Russia) and S.Manabe (Japan); 18 papers.

The papers of this session are the most theoretical in the mathematical sense.

The paper of H.Wu (Hiroshima Prefectural University, Japan) "Decentralized Iterative Learning Control Schemes for Large Scale Systems Including Delayed State Perturbations in the Interconnections" was devoted to the problem of decentralized iterative learning control for a class of large scale interconnected time-delay systems. The considered large scale time-delay systems are assumed to be linear time-invariant, and the interconnections between each subsystems to be unknown. A class of memory less decentralized local iterative learning control schemes is proposed, which can guarantee the asymptotic convergence of the local output errors between the given desired local output and the actual local output of each subsystem through the iterative learning process. In the paper a numerical example is given to demonstrate the validity of the results.

The paper of S.Zemlyakov and V.Rutkovsky (Institute of Control Sciences by V.A.Trapeznikov RAS, Moscow, Russia) "Computer Aided Modeling and Analytical Synthesis of Control Algorithms for a Spacecraft with Discretely Changing Structure" was devoted to the problem of control by a space robotic module that has a nonlinear multiconnected nonstationary mathematical model in the form of Lagrange's equation with limited control actions. The direct Lyapunov's method and the Pontryagin's maximum principle are used for the controller design that guarantees the prescribed dynamic accuracy.

Session 6. Flight Control for Aircraft and Helicopters. Chairs - K.Kanai (Japan) and M.Pelegrin (France); 16 papers.

In this section the greatest attention was to the paper of I.Vasilevsky (Alexeev's Central Design Bureau, Nizni Novgorod, Russia), V.Denisov (1-st CSRI of Russian Ministry of Defense, St. Petersburg, Russia) and A.Nebylov (State University of Aerospace Instrumentation, St. Petersburg, Russia) "Automatically Controlled Ekranoplanes: Experience and Problems". The important advantages of ekranoplanes are: 1) potentially higher safety of flight due to possibility of urgent ditching; 2) reduced requirements to engines operation reliability and, therefore, possibility of their service life fuller use; 3) absence of necessity for runway and possibility to perform special transport operation at amphibian property use (ekranoplanes can fly, float on water and creep out to the shore); 4) ability to carry a freight of large mass and dimensions are higher than for airplanes; 5) cost of construction, equipment and exploitation below aviation; and others. The attempts to develop commercial ekranoplanes were undertaken in different countries, but not rather successful yet. As a rule, the recently constructed vehicles were designed for 5-10 passengers' transportation at rivers, lakes and calm seas and have not any means of control automation. The paper is devoted to reasoning the idea of developing the large WIGs (Wing-in-ground machines) with perfect automatic control.

Session 7. Missile Guidance, Navigation and Control. Chairs - B.White (UK) and J.Mitchell (USA); 18 papers.

The interesting paper of T.Sreenuch, A.Tsourdos, E.Huges and B.White (Department of Aerospace, Power and Sensors Cranfield University, UK) "Multi-Objective Frequency Loop-Shaping of a Lateral Missile Autopilot" was devoted to the lateral acceleration control design of non-linear missile model using the multi-objective evolutionary optimization. The actuator constraint functions are formulated in term of closed-loop actuator impulse response. The non-linear simulation results show that the selected interpolated controller is a robust tracking controller for all perturbation vertices.

The paper of N.Dohi, Y.Baba and H.Takano (National Defense Academy, Japan) "Variable Speed Missile Guidance Law Against a Maneuvering Target" presents a new guidance law for a missile with varying velocity against a maneuvering target. This guidance law takes account of the missile's velocity change. The final form of the guidance law is mechanized by combining the augmented proportional navigation and the pure pursuit navigation with the mixture ratio. The simulation results show that the proposed guidance law is affective even if missile velocity varies significantly and can make the miss distance small over the wide range of off-boresight angle.

Session 8. Robust Control for Aerospace Applications. Chairs - H.Siguerdidjane (France) and W.Filho (Brazil); 11 papers.

At the paper of A.Henni and H.Siguerdidjane (France) "Robust Nonlinear Control of a Spacecraft During Landing Maneuvers on a Planet" it is proposed a robust nonlinear control of a space vehicle during vertically descent on a planet with non negligible atmospheric resistance, by using control Lyapunov function that renders the closed loop system dissipative. Simulation results are shown to be satisfactory in terms of the expected robustness with regards to atmospheric resistance uncertainty.

The paper of S.Zheltov and Y.Vizilter (State Research Institute of Aviation Systems, Moscow, Russia) was devoted to consideration and development of methods of feature extraction on the images for flight vehicle navigation and guidance purpose. The new robust method for linear feature extraction is described based on the original algorithm of fast recurrent Hough transform in a sliding window.

Session 9. Sensors, On-Board Equipment and Signal Processing. Chairs - D.DeBra (USA) and G.Bertoni (Italy); 20 papers.

The paper of M.Crisci, W.Geri and G.Bertoni (University of Bologna, Italy) "DEIS UAV: GNC Design and Avionics Implementation Issues" was devoted to a Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) and in particular to Guidance Navigation and Control (GNC) system for such an object. The vehicle, thanks to a partially autonomous flight capability, aims toљ be a very low cost and compact solution to perform significant flight test of general GNC algorithms or as a platform for mission oriented experiments, compared to very expensive aircraft based flight tests.

The interesting paper "A Rendezvous and Docking Sensor Using a Videometer" was presented by R.Strietzee (Jena-Optronik Gmbh, Dresden, Germany). A videometer allows the determination of relative position and attitude of a moving rigid body (chaser) in space, particularly for a relative approach movement towards another body (target). The videometer is installed at the chaser and a defined retro reflector configuration is mounted on the target spacecraft. The three-dimensional target configuration is illuminated by the chaser. The image sensor records the reflected light. The x-y coordinates of the light points are used to calculate relative position and attitude by means of a follow-up control loop, which processes the data from the image sensor to the state variables used for rendezvous and docking control.

Session 10. Fault Detection and Diagnosis of a Linear Hydraulic Servo Axis. Chair - R.Isermann (Germany); 7 papers.

The paper of M.Muenchhof and R.Isermann (Institute of Automatic Control, Darmstadt, Germany) was devoted to process model based methods to detect faults in a hydraulic linear servo axis by measurement of up to five variables. The faults that are detected include gas enclosures in the hydraulic fluid, such as air, gas enclosures and foam.

Session 11. Student Aerospace Projects. Chair - R.Fullmer (USA); 12 papers.

The session was devoted to questions of student learning and/or student project on space subjects.

At the paper "Russian Multifunctional Education-Research Students' Satellite "Mozhaetz" on the Orbit" authors V.Fateev, G.Kremez, E.Tkachev and O.Bulaev (A. F. Mozhaisky Military Space Academy, Saint-Petersburg, Russia) presented information about the "Program of new technologies (space, information, pedagogy and other) development through using micro space vehicles (SV) characteristics and capacities" caused the micro space apparatus "Mozhaetz" launching and carrying out the successful experiments with use of it. Experiments aimed to research the space factor influence on the board electronics recourses and to research the possibility of the orbit parameters determing by the use of satellite radio navigation systems as well, as to develop in the Academy modern, promising education methodology of SV control technology.

Session 12. Launcher Control. Chairs - D.Alazad (France) and B.Clement (France); 11 papers.

The paper of N.Imbert (ONERA/DCSD, Toulouse, France) and B.Clement (CNES/DLA, France)) "Launcher Attitude Control: Some Answers to the Robustness Issue" was devoted to the main results obtained in the frame of PIROLA, a 3 years research working group on robust control of launchers. The different synthesis methods which have been proposed and tested during the project are described. The advantages and limits of each method for this particular problem are emphasized.

Session 13. Gas Turbine Engine Health Monitoring. Chair - H.Thompson (UK); 6 papers.

The paper of T.Breikin, H.Thompson, P.Fleming (The University of Sheffield, UK), G.Kukikov and V.Arkov (Ufa State Aviation Technical University, Russia) "Investigation on Genetic Algorithms On-Line Application for Aero Engine Modeling and Condition Monitoring" was devoted to an application of genetic algorithms for on-line multi-objective optimisation. Two different multi-objective evolutionary computational techniques are implemented for optimal selection of gas turbine engine real-time model structure.

The paper of V.Rutkovsky, S.Zemlyakov, V.Sukhanov and V.Glumov (V.A.Trapeznikov Institute of Control Sciences RAS, Moscow, Russia) "Condition Monitoring of Gas Turbine Engine Transmission" was devoted to a new approach to condition monitoring of gas turbine engine transmission. It is show that an estimation of a current torsion angle of the transmission's shaft could be used for defining of the level of the shaft degradation, for the identication of free turbine's current torque and for designing of the engine shut-down look a head emergency system.

Session 14. Cooperative Control. Chair - A.Tsourdos (UK); 5 papers.

The authors E.Hughes and B.White (UK) of the paper "On-Line Evolutionary Algorithm Guidance for Multiple Missiles Against Multiple Targets" details the application of a Cooperative Coevolution On-Line Evolutionary Algorithm (CCOLEA) to the guidance of a swarm of multiple missiles, against multiple targets. The CCOLEA trades the spatial distribution of missiles at impact, against the cost of re-aiming the missiles' seekers onto their final targets.

At last the Session 15 (Chair: M.Harigal (Japan)) "Satellite Navigation Systems GPS/GLONASS Application" included 9 papers was devoted exclusively to GPS system.

The paper of T.Tsujii, M.Hauigal (Institute of Space Technology and Aeronautics, Japan), K.Okano and I.Petrovski (The Institute of Advanced Satellite Positioning Technology, Japan) "Preliminary Tests of GPS/HAPS Positioning System Using a Pseudolite on Helicopter" describes a new positioning/navigation service using pseudolites installed on the High Altitude Platforms Systems (HAPC). If pseudolites were mounted on the HAPS, their GPS-like signals could be stable augmentations that would improve the performance of GPS.

Of course a brief review of such a powerful International Symposium can not throw light on the Symposium in the whole, but it has to make everybody sure that he will discover a lot of efficient information in the Symposium's preprints.