Closed-Form Specified-Fuel Commands for On-Off Thrusters

A procedure is presented for generating on-off thruster commands for rest-to-rest slewing of flexible systems. The command profiles induce a low level of residual vibration and can be designed to use any desired amount of thruster fuel. A key advantage of the proposed method is that the commands are described by closed-form functions of the system parameters and the desired move distance. Performance measures such as maneuver speed, maximum transient deflection, and robustness to modeling errors indicate that the commands are attractive alternatives to time/fuel optimal commands that must be determined using a numerical optimization., Experimental results from a system driven by on-off air thrusters verify the proposed method.