An autonomous distributed control of free-floating variable geometry trusses

An autonomous distributed control has been presented as novel control methods for complex or large systems. In this paper, it is applied to the position control of variable geometry trusses, which have high redundancy. It is shown that the fault-tolerance of the system is easily realized through this control method. Additional behavior for obstacle avoidance is also accomplished easily. Furthermore, the area of avoidable obstacles can be extended through the cooperation of each agent. Compared with a conventional control method using inverse kinematics, the proposed method is shown to be more effective from the viewpoint of calculation time.