Distributed Safety-Critical Control for Formation Reconfiguration of Satellite Cluster

This article focuses on formation reconfiguration control for large-scale satellite clusters, which maneuver from the initial formation to the desired formation while satisfying safety constraints for intersatellite collision avoidance. To this end, a distributed safety-critical control method based on control barrier functions (CBFs) is proposed. First, a centralized CBF method is established as the foundation, featuring an analytical look-ahead CBF and a class K function with single-parameter configuration. To address optimization infeasibility arising from conflicts among multiple safety constraints and control amplitude constraints, a feasibility constraint is derived. Subsequently, we extend the centralized CBF to a distributed framework. Based on the physical mechanism of collision avoidance, a concise and intuitive protocol is proposed to achieve variable decoupling, where safety is guaranteed by reasonably assigning collision avoidance responsibilities among satellites. Furthermore, a robust safety-guaranteed strategy is designed for uncertain disturbances. Finally, simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method can effectively guarantee safety and feasibility for satellite cluster formation control mission while achieving high computational efficiency.