Adaptive reactionless control of free-floating space manipulators for detumbling a target with dynamic uncertainties

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

Detumbling targets in the post-capturing phase is significant for an on-orbit capturing mission. However, the momenta of targets usually cause disturbances to the attitude of a free-floating base during the detumbling process. This paper proposes an adaptive controller for free-floating space manipulators detumbling targets with dynamic uncertainties in the post-capturing phase. The key feature of the controller, termed as adaptive reactionless detumbling controller (ARDC), is that it can produce null disturbance to base attitude. First, a reaction null-space controller is established based on momentum conservation, by which the null disturbance can be achieved at the displacement level. Second, considering the target’s dynamic uncertainties, an adaptive dynamic compensation is included. Furthermore, the reaction null-space vector in the controller is determined by an optimization model with the aim of detumbling target. A reference guiding vector is defined in the optimization model to ensure a steady detumbling process. Finally, the stability of the proposed controller is verified using the Lyapunov theory. The effectiveness of our proposed controller is validated through simulations, wherein the effect of the initial velocity and dynamic uncertainties of the target and the parameters of the controller are also studied.