Electrostatic Forces for Swarm Navigation and Reconfiguration

With regard to the benefits of using multiple vehicles, the concept of formation control has been studied extensively in the literature with application to the coordination of multiple robots, unmanned air vehicles (UAVs), autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), satellites, aircraft and spacecraft. There are many advantages of using formations of multiple vehicles, such as increased feasibility, robustness, accuracy, flexibility, cost efficiency and probability of success. The propulsion system on a spacecraft is of key importance in formation flying missions and life time of mission depends on the available fuel on the spacecraft. Furthermore, in the missions where spacecrafts are flying in close proximity the exhaust plums from the thrusters of a satellite can damage the near by spacecraft which might result in total failure to the mission. In this study a recently developed concept of Coulomb satellite equipped with hybrid propulsion system will be presented. With the combination of Equilibrium shaping technique and Coulomb satellite concepts certain formations can be produced for which minimum communication between swarm agents and maximum fuel saving (up to 80%) is possible.