Journal of Guidance Control and Dynamics

The amount of debris in orbit has increased significantly over the years. With the recent growth of interest in space exploration, conjunction assessment has become a central issue. One important metric to evaluate conjunction risk is the miss distance. However, this metric does not intrinsically take into account uncertainty distributions. Some work has been developed to consider the uncertainty…

In space systems, controlled dynamics are often modeled using linear time-varying (LTV) models due to the periodic orbital motion of spacecraft. When designing such models, it is advantageous to construct computationally feasible representations that exhibit clear controllability properties. Network modeling approaches are particularly effective in this context. This paper addresses the need for …

Autonomous dynamic soaring can be used to increase the endurance and range of unmanned aerial vehicles by harvesting energy from the vertical gradient of the horizontal wind. This study aims to develop a guidance and control strategy that allows precise following of an optimal dynamic-soaring path for a glider vehicle. The proposed control architecture combines a geometric path-following guidance…

The main objective of the Chandrayaan-3 lunar landing mission was to achieve a safe and soft landing near the lunar south pole. The powered descent trajectory consisted of a braking phase with inertial navigation, an attitude hold, a braking phase with absolute navigation, and a terminal descent phase. This paper presents the flight-implemented closed-loop guidance design for the braking phase wi…

For responsive observation missions, characterized by significant variations in the ground locations of interest, a satellite constellation may have difficulty performing timely overflights of these ground targets. Performing reconfiguration maneuvers of the constellation is a possible option. For satellite constellations equipped with low-thrust propulsion systems, a burn–coast–burn three-phase …

A bilevel optimal control framework is introduced to solve the low-thrust rephasing problem on quasi-periodic invariant tori in multibody environments where deviations away from the torus during a maneuver are considered unsafe or irresponsible. It is shown for a large class of mechanical systems that conformity to the torus manifold during periods of nonzero control input is infeasible. The most…

In this paper, an optimization-based framework for generating estimation-aware trajectories is presented. In this setup, measurement (output) uncertainties are state-dependent and set-valued. Enveloping ellipsoids are employed to characterize state-dependent uncertainties with unknown distributions. The concept of regularity for set-valued output maps is then introduced, facilitating the formulat…

This paper covers the design of an [Formula: see text]-adaptive incremental nonlinear dynamic inversion (INDI) autopilot applied to the correction of the ballistic dispersion of a 155 mm dual-spin projectile equipped with a roll-decoupled course-correction fuze. First, an INDI autopilot baseline is designed with a tuning methodology taking into account some implementation constraints (i.e., actua…

Image-based surface reconstruction and characterization is crucial for missions to small celestial bodies, as it informs mission planning, navigation, and scientific analysis. However, current state-of-the-practice methods, such as stereophotoclinometry (SPC), rely heavily on human-in-the-loop verification and high-fidelity a priori information. This paper proposes Photoclinometry-from-Motion (Ph…

This paper presents a transformation-based robust nonlinear control design framework based on the concepts of incremental nonlinear dynamic inversion (INDI) and quasi-linear parameter-varying (q-LPV) control. The duality between these popular control design paradigms is investigated. Control-oriented q-LPV model representations of INDI and nonlinear dynamic inversion (NDI)-based closed-loop syste…

Advanced air mobility aircraft require energy-efficient flight plans to be economically viable. This paper defines minimum-energy direct trajectories between waypoints for [Formula: see text] electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft. Energy consumption is optimized over accelerated and cruise flight profiles with consideration of mode transitions. Because eVTOL operations start and …

Periodically alternating between climbing and gliding flight can result in a range advantage. This periodic cruise can benefit high-aspect-ratio aircraft especially, which are primary candidates for electric flight due to a low power demand. Electric aircraft typically operate at low speeds. At low speeds, the influence of wind on performance becomes more pronounced, making airspeed adaption to l…

During the conceptual design phase of an aircraft, the motion of a full-scale aircraft can be approximated via flight tests of a scaled model, which can then be used to evaluate both the aircraft design and its flying qualities. To date, similarity design studies on flying qualities criteria for scaled models have been limited to low-speed conditions, with no such studies conducted for supersonic…

Rocket reusability is a key factor in enabling quicker and more cost-effective access to space. However, landing on Earth poses significant challenges due to the dynamic and highly uncertain environment. A robust guidance, navigation, and control system is essential to guide the vehicle to the landing site while fulfilling terminal constraints and minimizing fuel consumption. This research integr…

Reach–avoid (RA) games have significant applications in security and defense, particularly for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). These problems are inherently challenging due to the need to consider obstacles and the adversarial nature of opponents, ensure optimality, and account for nonlinear dynamics. Hamilton–Jacobi (HJ) reachability analysis has emerged as a powerful tool for tackling these ch…