State-Feedback Control of the SpaceHawk Earth-Based Lunar Hopper
International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems
Atlanta, Georgia, USA, May 28-31, 2013
| Abstract |
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In this paper we present a control strategy for the SpaceHawk, an Earth-based model spacecraft designed to navigate the surface of the moon in a series of "hops." By design, the nonholonomic dynamics of the SpaceHawk allow the use of fullstate feedback linearization, which obviates the need for more involved control techniques such as backstepping. We design two controllers: an exact feedback-linearization controller for the position states, and an approximate linearization controller for the attitude states. The approximate-linearization simplifies the attitude control task by excluding the highly nonlinear attitude dynamics from the designed control laws. Simulation results show both controllers performing well in stability and tracking.