Andrew Robertson's Homepage

		Andrew D. Robertson Ph.D. Candidate Stanford University Department of Aeronautics & Astronautics Durand Room 010B, E-mail: adr@leland.stanford.edu

Work Experience

I spent the summer of 1994 and the first half of 1995 working on the MSAT spacecraft at Hughes. Specifically, I worked on a stabilizing attitude control system for MSAT during transfer orbit. I was also a member of the mission team during launch and transfer orbit.

Research Interests

My thesis work investigates new technologies for spacecraft formation flying which is an enabling technology for a new class of space missions. These missions will combine measurements from science instruments on separate spacecraft to achieve new levels of high resolution. This concept - called the virtual spacecraft bus - allows far more flexibility and observing baselines limited only by the control system and available fuel. Formation flying technologies (including: relative sensing, control, high-level autonomy, fuel-optimal trajectory planning, and increasingly precise successive levels of instrument alignment control) will enable virtual spacecraft bus missions for synthetic aperture radar, separated spacecraft interferometry for astrometry and astronomy, gravity wave detection, and more.

I work in the Stanford University Aerospace Robotics Lab (ARL). My work includes theory, simulation and experiments on our spacecraft formation flying testbed which includes three self-contained air cushion vehicles with cold gas thrusters, reaction wheels and on-board computing. These vehicles can be tracked using our indoor GPS system or an overhead vision system. More information (including some movies) can be found at the ARL web site.

ARL's free flying space robot testbed

Education

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