Engineering topics

Vathsal, S.

Publications and source records attributed to Vathsal, S..

4 records

NASA NTRS1987

Spacecraft attitude determination using a second-order nonlinear filter

The stringent attitude determination accuracy and faster slew maneuver requirements demanded by present-day spacecraft control systems motivate the development of recursive nonlinear filters for attitude estimation. This paper presents the second-order filter development for the estimation of attitude quaternion using three-axis gyro and star tracker measurement data. Performance comparisons have been made by computer simulation of system models and filter mechanization. It is shown that the second-order filter consistently performs better than the extended Kalman filter when the performance index of the root sum square estimation error of the quaternion vector is compared. The second-order filter identifies the gyro drift rates faster than the extended Kalman filter. The uniqueness of this algorithm is the online generation of the time-varying process and measurement noise covariance matrices, derived as a function or the process and measurement nonlinearity, respectively.

Vathsal, S.↗

NASA NTRS1986

Design and simulation of closed-loop ground alignment of inertial platforms with sway motion

This paper is concerned with the application of optimal estimation and control concepts to the ground alignment of inertial platforms subjected to random sway motion. A seventh-order Kalman filter has been designed for estimating the platform misalignments and sway motion. Using the linear quadratic optimal regulator techniques, feedback controller gains have been designed to drive the initial misalignments to a small value. A reconfiguration of the filter controller scheme has been proposed and verified by Monte Carlo simulation for improving the speed of alignment without changing the alignment accuracy.

Vathsal, S.↗

NASA NTRS1986

Optimal control of quaternion propagation errors in spacecraft navigation

Optimal control techniques are used to drive the numerical error (truncation, roundoff, commutation) in computing the quaternion vector to zero. The normalization of the quaternion is carried out by appropriate choice of a performance index, which can be optimized. The error equations are derived from Friedland's (1978) theoretical development, and a matrix Riccati equation results for the computation of the gain matrix. Simulation results show that a high precision of the order of 10 to the -12th can be obtained using this technique in meeting the q(T)q=1 constraint. The performance of the estimator in the presence of the feedback control that maintains the normalization, is studied.

Vathsal, S.↗

NASA NTRS1986

Nonlinear filtering for spacecraft attitude estimation

Nonlinear filtering techniques are applied to spacecraft attitude estimation using quaternion parameterization for the attitude kinematics. By replacing the angular velocity vector by the gyro output vector, a state dependent noise vector is introduced in the seven-dimensional system equations. The resulting conditional probability density function from the Ito differential rule is governed by the Fokker Planck partial differential equation which is approximated by the second order mean and covariance differential equations. In order to minimize computer loading, the covariance propagation is carried out in six-dimensional state space using a matrix transformation. The star tracker data is used to update the covariance matrix in the seven-dimensional space. The algorithm is simulated for an earth pointing spacecraft mission, using Monte Carlo samples of gyro and star measurements. The performance of the second order filter is compared with the extended Kalman Filter through several simulation runs and drift rates have been identified.

Vathsal, S.↗