Formation flying control of multiple spacecraft via graphs, matrix inequalities, and switching

Formation flying has been identified as an enabling technology for many of the future NASA deep space and earth science missions. Various methodologies have been considered for formation control of multiple spacecraft, each offering different degrees of generality and flexibility. One popular framework is known as leader following (LF). Several results in the LF framework for the formation flying control are presented. In this direction, ideas from elementary graph theory and linear matrix inequalities are combined with logic-based switching to shed light on the class of control designs that are feasible through LF for a representative set of formation flying scenarios.