A Heuristic Active Fault Tolerant Controller for the Stabilization of Spacecraft

A heuristic active fault tolerant controller is designed based on the model of elections in a two-party democratic society. The goal of the proposed controller is to modify reference trajectories to maintain the stability of the faulty spacecraft. The elections are assumed to be first order Markovian. Final state constraints are used to ensure that the angular velocities asymptotically converge to the origin. A simulation shows that the proposed method makes the origin an asymptotically stable equilibrium point for the considered spacecraft. Because of its computational efficiency, the proposed method can be effectively used on-line in real-time, an important feature of any active fault tolerant controller. The present paper shows that socio-political models have a great potential to solve complex engineering problems and opens a new window for further developments in this field.