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This is an offshoot of this question.

There's a new generation of space suits coming up (Z-series, anything that the Zvezda NPP has up its sleeves), and I wonder at the level of sophistication of control algorithms and circuitry used there. Have there been any articles in space engineering journals on using $H_\infty$ methods to get controllers with guaranteed performance? Logic to work around unexpected failures?

Browsing through the list of spacewalks on Wikipedia, I gather quite a few cases where suits' subsystems failed or underperformed (cooling failures, water/humidity control glitches etc.) which had material impact on EVA length and achieved results. While the root causes might have been in hardware, software/controller algorithms could be improved as well.

Deer Hunter
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  • The complexity of the avionics in the newer space suits is on par with that of the newest space capsules. The current EVA suits are too expensive to upgrade the avionics on, so we’re stuck with those until the newer space suits (XEMU, etc) come online. – CourageousPotato Oct 09 '19 at 08:25
  • Is there a reason why avionics modules cannot just be shipped up and replaced? – ikrase Feb 20 '20 at 08:50
  • @ikrase The aerospace world very heavily subscribes to the mentality of "If it is not broken, don't fix it". If something works, why take the risk of modifications causing problems later on. This is why the Mars rover being launched into orbit this year (2020), using a processor design from the very very iMac in the late 1990s. – BarrowWight Jul 17 '20 at 19:49

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