Fuzzy Tuning Manipulation Control of a space robot with passive flexible solar panels

Abstract

Flexible members such as solar panels of space robotic systems during a maneuver may get stimulated and vibrate. Therefore, such vibrations will cause some oscillatory disturbance forces on the moving base and manipulated object, which in turn produces error in the position and speed of the manipulating end-effectors, which should be prevented. In this paper, a new control algorithm for an object manipulation task by a space robotic system with passive flexible members is proposed. Although, the path/trajectory design consideration can be useful to prevent the occurrence of these effects but, this is not the comprehensive method at last. To encounter these flexibility effects and to consider the assumption of the passive members, the presence of a new control algorithm seems essential. To this end, first the system dynamics is partitioned into two rigid and flexible bodies' motion, and an applied model for control implementations on compounded rigid-flexible multi-body systems is developed. Then, based on a designed path/trajectory for a space robotic system, the Fuzzy Tuning Manipulation Control (FTMC) is proposed to perform an object manipulation task by such complicated rigid-flexible multi-body systems. Finally, a space free flying robotic system is simulated which contains two 2-DOF planar manipulators, and a rotating antenna and a camera as its third and fourth arms, appended with two solar panels equipped with a single array of piezoelectric patches on tip of each. Obtained results reveal the merits of the proposed FTMC algorithm which will be discussed.