Space related control research by
Professor Tommy Gravdahl,
Department of Engineering Cybernetics, NTNU

Ongoing projects:

• NTNU Cubesat

Previous Projects

• Coordinated control of formation flying spacecraft, Two PhD students funded via The strategic university program (SUP) on Computational Method in Nonlinear Motion Control and one PhD student funded by Narvik University College
• SSETI: SSETI Express, European Student Earth Orbiter (ESEO) and European Student Moon Orbiter (ESMO). Students from NTNU together with Students from HiN constituted the Norwegian SSETI/ESMO-team.
• nCube, nCube II. These student pico-satellites were based on the Cubesat concept, that is: cube with all sides equal 10cm and total mass less than 1kg. The satellites are equipped with torque coils for active control of attitude and a gravity boom for passive stabilization. Attitude is measured using magnetometer and sun sensor.

PhD students

Thomas Røbekk Krogstad "Attitude synchronization in spacecraft formations Theoretical and experimental results". PDF Supervisor: Professor Jan Tommy Gravdahl Dr. Krogstad defended his PhD degree on January 28th 2010. He is now with the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment, Oslo, Norway.

Esten Ingar Grøtli "Robust stability and control of spacecraft formations". PDF Supervisor: Professor Jan Tommy Gravdahl Dr. Grøtli defended his PhD degree on February 10th 2010. He is now a post.doc with the Department of Engineering Cybernetics, NTNU

Raymond Kristiansen "Dynamic Synchronization of Spacecraft: Modeling and Coordinated Control of Leader-Follower Spacecraft Formations." PDF Supervisor: Associate professor Per J. Nicklasson, Narvik University College, Advisor: Professor Jan Tommy Gravdahl Dr. Kristiansen defended his PhD degree on May 14th 2008. He is now Associate Professor at Narvik University College, Norway

Awards

• Best student paper award in the area of Signal processing, systems modeling and control at the 7th International Conference on Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics (ICINCO 2010), Funchal, Madeira, Portugal, June 15-18, 2010 for the paper Grøtli, E. I., Chaillet, A., Panteley, E., Gravdahl, J. T., Robustness of ISS systems to inputs with limited moving average, with application to spacecraft formations.
• Thomas R. Krogstad was awarded a sponsorship for the paper: Krogstad T.R., J.T. Gravdahl and R. Kristiansen, "Coordinated control of satellites: the attitude case" by ESA for the Student Participation Programme to the International Astronautical Congress 2005 in Fukuoka, Japan
• Øyvind Hegrenæs was awarded NFA's (National IFAC Member Organization) prize for best MSc Thesis within the field of Automatic control in Norway in the year 2004 fot the thesis entiteled ”Attitude Control by Means of Explicit Model Predictive Control, via Multi-Parametric Quadratic Programming”.
• K.M. Fauske, Indergaard, F., and Svartveit, K were awarded with a Honorable Mention and a 2000$ scholarship in the 11th Annual Frank J. Redd Student Scholarship Competition for the paper "ncube: The First Norwegian Student Satellite" presented on the 17th Annual AIAA/USU Conference on Small satellites, Logan, Utah, August, 2003. The paper was co-authored with Riise, Å.-R., Samuelsen, B., Sokolova, N., Cederblad, H., Fasseland, J., Nordin, C., Otterstad, J., Eriksen, O., Furebotten, P., Sæther, E., and Eide, E
• Krøvel T.D was awarded the Young Lunar Explorers Award by the International Lunar Exploration Working Group (ILEWG) for his paper Krøvel T.D, K. Jerpetjøn and S. Ulrich, "The European Student Moon Orbiter Project", The 2005 International Lunar Conference on the Exploration and Utilization of the Moon, September 18-23, 2005.

25 MSc-theses in the period 2002-2010:

Cooperation with: Norwegian Space Centre, ESA, SSETI and Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace

• Kjetil Jubskås Olsen: Control of a satellite and optimal use of sensors (In cooperation with Dr. Åge Skullestad, Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace), 2002
• Bjørn Even Busterud: Attitude control of micro sattellites (In cooperation with Dr. Åge Skullestad, Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace) , 2003
• Geir Ytrehus: Control of a micro satellite with reaction wheels in a tetraedron (In cooperation with Dr. Åge Skullestad, Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace) , 2003
• Fredrik Mietle Indergaard: Design and implementation of a gravity boom for the Norwegian nano satellite NCUBE, 2003, Main results of Thesis published in [1],[2]
• Kristian Svartveit: Attitude determination for the Norwegian nano satellite NCUBE, 2003, Main results of Thesis published in [1],[2]
• Kjell Magne Fauske: Attitude stabilization of an underactuated rigid spacecraft, 2003, (Supervisor: Professor Kristin Pettersen, Advisor: Jan Tommy Gravdahl)
• Morten Topland: Attitude Control for the micro satellite SSETI/ESEO. Cooperation with European Space Agency (ESA), 2004, Main results of Thesis published in [3],[5]
• Øyvind Hegrenæs: Attitude Control by means of explicit model predictive control, via multi-parametric qudratic programming. Cooperation with European Space Agency (ESA), 2004 Main results of Thesis published in [3],[6]
• Eli Jerpseth Øverby: Attitude control for the Norwegian student satellite nCube Cooperation with the Norwegain Space Centre, 2004, Main results of Thesis published in [4]
• Stian Søndersrød Ose: Attitude determination for the Norwegian student satellite nCube. Advisor: Dr. Bjørnar Vik. Cooperation with the Norwegain Space Centre, 2004, Main results of Thesis published in [4]
• Ketil Brun: Design and analysis of magnetic attitude control, Cooperation with the Norwegain Space Centre, 2005
• Trond Dagfinn Krøvel: PWPF-modulation of thrusters for the micro satellite SSETI/ESMO, 2005
• Kristin Johansson: Orbit control for the microsatellite SSETI/ESMO, 2005
• Thomas Krogstad: Coordinated control of formations of satellites: the attitude case, Advisor: Raymond Kristiansen, HiN, 2005 Main results of Thesis published in [11,13,16,17]
• Svein Tohami El Moussaoui Brembo: Attitude determination, (In cooperation with Dr. Åge Skullestad, Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace), 2005
• Bernt Ove Sunde: Attitude determination for satellites, (In cooperation with Dr. Åge Skullestad, Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace), 2005, Main results of Thesis published in [19]
• Esten Ingar Grøtli: Coordinated control of formations of satellites: the relative position case, (In cooperation with Dr. Åge Skullestad, Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace), Advisor: Raymond Kristiansen, HiN, 2005, Main results of Thesis published in [15]
• Tord Håvard Aune: Coordinated hybrid control of satellite formations, 2006
• Ida Cornelia Wilhelmsen Wessel: Formation control of spacecraft, 2006
• Kjell Rhode: Attitude control of a pico satellite, 2007
• Jan Rohde: Kalman filter for attitude determination of student satellite, 2007
  
• Karianne Tønne: Design av attitude determination system for romfartøy i bane rundt månen, Kalman-filter, 2007
• Ivar Waarum: Design av attitude determination system for romfartøy i bane rundt månen, ulineær observer, 2007
• Finn Eivind Slungård: Modellering, regulering og simulering av dobbel Cubesat, 2009
• Ulrik Jørgensen:Synchronization and Control of Attitude for Spacecrafts: Design, Analysis and Experiments, 2010

Publications:

• Gravdahl, J.T, E. Eide, A.Skavhaug, K. Svartveit, K. M. Fauske and F. M. Indergaard, Three axis Attitude Determination and Control System for a picosatellite: Design and implementation, Proceedings of the 54th International Astronautical Congress, Bremen, Germany, 2003
• Riise, Å.-R., Samuelsen, B., Sokolova, N., Cederblad, H., Fasseland, J., Nordin, C., Otterstad, J., Fauske, K., Eriksen, O., Indergaard, F., Svartveit, K., Furebotten, P., Sæther, E., and Eide, E., “Ncube: The First Norwegian Student Satellite,” In Proceedings of The 17th AIAA/USU Conference on Small Satellites, Logan, Utah, August, 2003.
• ESEO-poster on STEC
• Øverby, E.J., J.T. Gravdahl, S.S. Ose and K.M. Fauske, nCube - Norwegian Student satellite: Attitude Determination and Control System, poster at the Space Technology Education Conference, STEC2004, EPF Lausanne, Switzerland, 14-16 April 2004
• Topland, M. and J.T. Gravdahl, Nonlinear attitude control of the microsatellite ESEO, proceedings of the 55th International Astronautical Congress, Vancouver, Canada, 2004
• Hegrenæs, Ø., J.T. Gravdahl and P. Tøndel, Attitude Control by means of Explicit Model Predictive Control, via Multi-parametric Quadratic Programming, In proceedings of the 2005 American Control Conference, Portland Oregon, 2005
• Hegrenæs, Ø., J.T. Gravdahl and P. Tøndel, Attitude Control by means of Explicit Model Predictive Control, via Multi-parametric Quadratic Programming, Automatica, 41(12), pp. 2107-2114, 2005
• J.T. Gravdahl, Magnetic attitude control for satellites, In proceedings of the 43rd IEEE Conference on Decition and Control, Paradise Island, Bahamas, 2004
• Kristiansen, R., P.J. Nicklasson and J. T. Gravdahl, Satellite attitude tracking by quaternion-based backstepping, In Proc. IFAC World Congress, Prague, Czech Republic, 2005.
• Grøtli E.I. and J.T. Gravdahl, Coordinated control of satellites: the relative position case, Space Technology Education Conference, STEC2005, Aalborg, Denmark, 6-8 April 2005
• Krogstad T.R., J.T. Gravdahl and P. Tøndel, Attitude control and stability analysis of satellites in earth and moon orbit, Space Technology Education Conference, STEC2005, Aalborg, Denmark, 6-8 April 2005
• Krøvel, T.D. and J.T. Gravdahl, Pulse Width-Pulse Frequency Modulation of Thrusters for the Micro-Satellite SSETI/ESMO, Space Technology Education Conference, STEC2005, Aalborg, Denmark, 6-8 April 2005
• Krogstad T.R., J.T. Gravdahl and P. Tøndel, Explicit model predictive control of a satellite with magnetic torquers, Proceedings of the 13th Mediterranean Conference on Control and Automation, Limassol, Cyprus, June 27-29, 2005
• Bondhus A.K., K.Y. Pettersen and J.T Gravdahl, Leader/Follower synchronization of satellite attitude without angular velocity measurements, in proc. of the 44th IEEE Conference on Decition and Control, Seville, Spain, December 2005
• R. Kristiansen, E.I. Grøtli, P. J. Nicklasson and J.T. Gravdahl, A model of relative position and attitude in a leader-follower spacecraft formation, proccedings of SIMS2005, the 46th Scandinavian conference on simulation and modeling, Trondheim, Norway, October 13-14, 2005
• Krogstad T.R, J.T. Gravdahl and P. Tøndel Attitude control and stability analysis of satellites in earth and moon orbit, proceedings of the 56th International Astronautical Congress, Fukoka, Japan, October 17-21, 2005
• Krogstad T.R., J.T. Gravdahl and R. Kristiansen, Coordinated control of satellites: the attitude case, proceedings of the 56th International Astronautical Congress, Fukoka, Japan, October 17-21, 2005
• Sunde B.O. and J.T. Gravdahl, Attitude Determination for the student satellite nCubeII: Kalman Filter, proceedings of the 56th International Astronautical Congress, Fukoka, Japan, October 17-21, 2005
• R. Kristiansen, P.J.Nicklasson, J.T.Gravdahl, Quaternion-Based Backstepping Control of Relative Attitude in a Spacecraft Formation, to appear in the proc. of the 45th IEEE CDC, San Diego, December 2006
• T. Krogstad, J T. Gravdahl, 6-DOF mutual synchronization of formation flying spacecraft, to appear in the proc. of the 45th IEEE CDC, San Diego, December 2006
• Kristiansen R., P.J. Nicklasson and J.T. Gravdahl, Satellite Attitude Control by Quaternion-Based Backstepping,IEEE Transactions on control systems technology (T-CST), 17(1), pp. 227-232, January 2009
• Kristiansen R., E.I. Grøtli, P.J. Nicklasson and J.T. Gravdahl, A model of relative position and attitude in a leader-follower spacecraft formation, Modeling, Identification and Control (MIC) , vol. 28, no. 1, 2007
• Pettersen, K.Y.; Gravdahl, J.T.; Nijmeijer, H.(Eds.), "Group Coordination and Cooperative Control", Series: Lecture Notes in Control and Information Sciences, Vol. 336, ISBN: 3-540-33468-8, Springer Verlag, Heidelberg, 2006
• Krogstad T.R., J.T. Gravdahl, Synchronization of formation-flying spacecraft, in Pettersen, K.Y.; Gravdahl, J.T.; Nijmeijer, H. (Eds.), "Group Coordination and Cooperative Control", Series: Lecture Notes in Control and Information Sciences, Vol. 336, ISBN: 3-540-33468-8, Springer Verlag, Heidelberg, 2006
• Kristiansen, R., T. R. Krogstad, P. J. Nicklasson and J. T. Gravdahl, Spacecraft coordination control using PID backstepping, proceedings of the 17th IFAC Symposium on Automatic Control in Aerospace (ACA), Toulouse, France, 2007.
• Kristiansen R., P.J.Nicklasson, J.T.Gravdahl, Formation Modelling and 6DOF Spacecraft Coordination Control, proc. of the 2007 American Control Conference, New York, NY
• Krogstad T.R., R. Kristiansen, J.T. Gravdahl and P. J. Nicklasson, PID+ backstepping control of relative spacecraft attitude, in proc. of the 7th IFAC Symposium on Nonlinear Control Systems (NOLCOS), Pretoria, South Africa, 2007
• Grøtli E.I., J.T. Gravdahl, Passivity based controller-observer schemes for relative translation of a formation of spacecraft, proc. of the 2007 American Control Conference, New York, NY
• T.R. Krogstad, J.T. Gravdahl, E. Børhaug and K.Y. Pettersen, AUVSAT: An experimental platform for spacecraft formation flying, proceedings of the 59th International Astronautical Congress, Glasgow, Scottland, September 29.-October 3rd, 2008
• Grøtli, E. I. and J.T. Gravdahl, Formation Control by Quantized Output Feedback, Proceedings of the 3rd International Symposium on Formation Flying, Missions and Technologies, 23-25 April 2008, Noordwijk, The Netherlands, June 2008, K. Fletcher (Ed.), ESA SP-654
• Kristiansen, R., T. R. Krogstad, P. J. Nicklasson and J. T. Gravdahl, PID+ tracking in a leader-follower spacecraft formation, Proceedings of the 3rd International Symposium on Formation Flying, Missions and Technologies, 23-25 April 2008, Noordwijk, The Netherlands, June 2008, K. Fletcher (Ed.), ESA SP-654
• E.I. Grøtli, J.T. Gravdahl, Output attitude tracking of formation of spacecraft, in proceedings of the 17th IFAC World Congress, July 6-11, 2008, Seoul, Korea.
• E.I. Grøtli, A. Chaillet, J.T. Gravdahl, Output Control of Spacecraft in Leader Follower Formation, in proceedings of the 47th IEEE CDC, Cancun, Mexico, December, 2008
• T.R. Krogstad, J.T. Gravdahl, E. Børhaug and K.Y. Pettersen, AUVSAT: An experimental platform for spacecraft formation flying, proceedings of the 59th International Astronautical Congress, Glasgow, Scottland, September 29.-October 3rd, 2008
• T.R. Krogstad, J.T. Gravdahl, Output feedback control of relative spacecraft attitude, in proceedings of the European Control Conference, Budapest, Hungary, August 23-26, 2009
• Grøtli, E. I., Chaillet, A., Panteley, E., Gravdahl, J. T., Robustness of ISS systems to inputs with limited moving average, with application to spacecraft formations. In Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics (ICINCO 2010), Funchal, Madeira, Portugal, June 15-18, 2010. Awarded with the Best Student Paper Award in the area of Signal Processing, Systems Modeling and Control.
• P.J. From, K.Y. Pettersen and J.T. Gravdahl, Singularity-Free Dynamic Equations of Spacecraft-Manipulator Systems, In proc. of the 61st International Astronautical Congress, Prague, Czech Republic, September 27th - October 1st, 2010
• Grøtli, E. I., Chaillet, A., Panteley, E., Gravdahl, J. T. Robustness of ISS systems to inputs with limited moving average, with application to spacecraft formations. Conditionally accepted for publication in International Journal of Robust and Nonlinear Control, 2010

Other:

• MSc student Trond Dagfinn Krøvel serves as president of SSETI in 2004/05
• MSc students Svartveit and Indergaard participated in the ESA 6th Student Parabolic Flight Campaign in summer 2003, testing the gravity boom of the nCube satellite in zero-g.
• Experts in Team, 2002: How to make a Norwegian micro satellite a success, 32 studens participated in this multifacultary project
• J.T Gravdahl and 50 students from the Department of Engineering Cybernetics visited ESAs European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) in Noordwijk, the Netherlands for a one day stay in 2003.

Kennedy Space Center tourist Tommy Gravdahl in front of an Apollo ADCS computer.
Editor: Tommy Gravdahl, Contact address: Tommy.Gravdahl@ itk.ntnu.no , Updated: October 19, 2010