Design and validation of hybrid attitude determination and control system for Cubesat through hardware-in-the-loop simulation

Abstract

More accurate and flexible attitude maneuvering capability is demanded for extending applications of miniaturized satellites. In this paper, an autonomous conditionbased switching method among a family of control and estimation algorithms is proposed to extract required attitude maneuvering performance with low-price sensors, small-sized actuators, and low-powered processors. A hybrid automaton design for multi-algorithmic hybrid ADCS is proposed by defining a set of operative modes, domain mapping, set of edges, and guard mapping. In addition, experimental analysis is pursued using CubeSat Three-Axis Simulator (CubeTAS) to simulate a frictionless and torque-free environment. By implementing the hybrid ADCS on the real-time test bed, the performance of the proposed method is validated with real sensors, actuators, and computing resources.