Han-Chul Cho
Yonsei University · Engineering
About the Lab
Professor Han-Chul Cho's research lab specializes in advanced aerospace dynamics and control, with a focus on satellite formation flying, optimal trajectory design, and nonlinear control methodologies. The lab develops analytical and exact solutions for complex space missions involving relative motion, reconfiguration, and attitude control under realistic orbital perturbations. Key research directions include the application of advanced analytical mechanics—such as the Udwadia-Kalaba approach—to derive exact control laws without linearization, and the integration of model predictive control with pre-designed linear controllers for constrained systems. The lab emphasizes closed-form solutions and high-fidelity modeling to enable precise, fuel-efficient, and robust spacecraft operations in both circular and elliptic orbits.
Research Overview
Research Output Trend
Figures are computed from collected data and may differ slightly.
Selected Papers
15A simple analytical approach for formation-keeping of satellites in the presence of both orbital and attitude requirements is developed. A leader satellite is assumed to be in a -perturbed circular reference orbit and each follower satellite is required to stay in its prescribed, desired orbit with respect to the leader satellite, and at the same time, to point to an arbitrarily chosen specific spot in space that may be time-varying. Nonlinear relative dynamics is considered in its entirety with
This paper presents a new, simple, and exact solution to the formation keeping of satellites when the relative distance between the satellites is so large that the linearized relative equations of motion no longer hold. We employ a recently proposed approach, the Udwadia-Kalaba approach, which makes it possible to explicitly obtain the desired control function without making any approximations related to the nonlinearities in the underlying dynamics. We use an inertial frame of reference to desc
This paper investigates the application of a method to find the cost function or the weight matrices to be used in model predictive control (MPC) such that the MPC has the same performance as a predesigned linear controller in state-feedback form when constraints are not active. This is potentially useful when a successful linear controller already exists and it is necessary to incorporate the constraint-handling capabilities of MPC. This is the case for a wave energy converter (WEC), where the
This paper presents an analytic solution to the optimal reconfiguration problem of satellite formation flying in J <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> orbital perturbation. Continuous and variable low-thrust accelerations are represented by the Fourier series, and initial and final boundary conditions are used to establish the constraints on the thrust functions. The thrust functions are implemented by optimal Fourier coefficient
Abstract not provided.
The current paper presents application of a new analytic solution in general relative motion to spacecraft formation flying in an elliptic orbit. The calculus of variations is used to analytically find optimal trajectories and controls for the given problem. The inverse of the fundamental matrix associated with the dynamic equations is not required for the solution in the current study. It is verified that the optimal thrust vector is a function of the fundamental matrix of the given state equat
Our paper proposes an approach for the extraction of stream channels from airborne laser swath mapping (ALSM) data. Recent advances in technology have led to high-resolution topographic data acquisition by means of ALSM yielding digital elevation model (DEM) datasets with horizontal resolutions of lm and a vertical accuracy of 0.15 m. We apply morphological operations on an ALSM DEM to detect stream channels. The results are compared with an existing terrain analysis tool known as TauDEM. Tools
This paper presents a new adaptive methodology for sliding mode control of a nonlinear dynamical system in the presence of unknown, but bounded uncertainties. A continuous control law is first developed to compensate for the uncertainties and this Lyapunov-based approach eliminates chattering by replacing a discontinuous signum function with a continuous function. By investigating the relation between the estimated gain with respect to the real unknown uncertainties and the resultant sliding var
Research Areas
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