Controlling a Black-Box Simulation of a Spacecraft

When building a controller for a physical process, traditional control theory requires a mathematical model to predict the behavior of the process so that appropriate control decisions can be made. Unfortunately, either many real-world processes are too complicated to accurately model, or insufficient information is available about the process environment. In addition, optimal control strategies can themselves exhibit undesirable complexity. However, a human controller can often acquire relatively simple strategies to effect near-optimal control from operational experience. This article reports on experiments performed using a black-box simulation of a spacecraft.