Ethan Foss Presents at ACC 2026

I am really impressed by Ethan Foss who just qualified for the PhD program in Aero/Astro at the Stanford University Space Rendezvous Laboratory after an exceptionally productive year of research and related publications. He presented some of his results at the 2026 American Control Conference in New Orleans, Louisiana (https://acc2026.a2c2.org/).

Foss, E., and D'Amico, S.; Efficient Input-Constrained Impulsive Optimal Control of Linear Systems with Application to Spacecraft Relative Motion; 2026 IEEE American Control Conference (ACC);

This work presents a novel algorithm for impulsive optimal control of linear time-varying systems with the inclusion of input magnitude constraints over time windows of interest. The method is shown to preserve the impulsive nature of the optimal solution and enable efficient solution procedures via semi-infinite programming. The resulting algorithm is demonstrated on the highly relevant problem of relative motion control for spacecraft proximity operations and formationflying applications.

We are really looking forward to embed this new capability within our autonomy stack to handle thruster constraints optimally for our upcoming missions.