Adaptive Reactionless Motion Control for Free-Floating Space Manipulators with Uncertain Kinematics and Dynamics

Abstract

Abstract This paper investigates the adaptive version of reaction null-space (RNS) based control for free-floating space manipulators with uncertain kinematics and dynamics. The great challenge in deriving the adaptive RNS-based control scheme is that it is difficult to obtain a linear expression which is the basis of the adaptive control. The main contribution of this paper is that we skillfully obtain such a linear expression, based on which, an adaptive version of the RNS-based controller is developed at velocity level, taking into account both the kinematic and dynamic uncertainties. It is shown that the proposed control achieves both the base attitude regulation and continuous path tracking of the end-effector. The simulation results are presented to show the effectiveness of the proposed controller.