Selected research

MACRO

Multi-agent space assembly

Coordinating spacecraft to assemble structures too large to launch in one piece, through task allocation, motion planning, and attitude control.

Paper Code Undergraduate thesis

Context: Undergraduate thesis · IIT Bombay
Collaboration: With Dwaipayan Mukherjee
Areas: Multi-robot systems · Allocation · Formation control

AI concept illustration of spacecraft assembling a segmented telescope above Earth, with its mirror facing deep space — Spacecraft assembling a segmented telescope with its aperture facing away from Earth. AI-generated concept illustration.

Problem

Launch-vehicle constraints limit the aperture of monolithic space telescopes. MACRO asks how multiple spacecraft could autonomously assemble a larger parabolic structure after deployment in an elliptic orbit.

Contribution

I developed this framework in my undergraduate thesis at IIT Bombay, supervised by Dwaipayan Mukherjee, bringing together spacecraft allocation, formation maneuvers, and attitude coordination.

The framework decomposes the assembly problem into allocation, collision-aware formation maneuvers, local attitude synchronization, and convergence to prescribed positions and orientations around a central spacecraft.

The public repository packages the simulation methods accompanying the undergraduate thesis and paper.

Outcome

The work was published at the 2021 Indian Control Conference and released with its simulation code and undergraduate thesis.

Simulation studies examine the coordinated assembly formulation in an elliptic orbit.

Simulation results

Three-dimensional simulated trajectories for positional convergence of an 18-spacecraft formation — Eighteen spacecraft converge toward an initial formation using the ZSP auction allocation. Thesis Figure 4.7(a). Source

Simulated spacecraft trajectories during intra-formation exchanges — The subsequent exchange stage rearranges spacecraft to match their assigned mirror geometry. Thesis Figure 4.7(b). Source

Citation

How to cite this work

Peer-reviewed conference paper · Indian Control Conference, 2021